Reynolds, still poking at the facial implants, stood next to the doorway into the conference room, leaning against the wall, jaw clenched and eyes furrowed. Rosy, fingers folded behind her shaved head, paced slowly back and forth in the conference room, her LoC Security uniform shirt untucked, eyes focused into her AR contacts. I sat at the conference table across from agent Brie, the sweaty handkerchief usually wrapped around her head lying on the table in front of her, revealing dark, slicked-back hair. The woman Reynolds and I brought back from Kansas sat at the head of the table to my right.
The others involved in our July fourth plan were still on the way.
I wish I had Akira for this…
“So, this was definitely a coordinated effort,” I said.
The woman rolled her eyes. She gave us a story about Kali doing this, but it didn’t add up, so I wanted to verify. The woman insisted it a waste of time.
“For sure,” Brie said, “but focused. Reports say they left a few mesh networks up in a couple cities.”
“Obviously networks Kali’s people are usin’,” the woman said.
“It looks like Shirou’s virus,” I said, looking at the woman, “that sounds more like an AK job to me.”
“The virus is everywhere,” the woman sighed, “we can’t be the only ones who thought to use it.”
“Who’s Shirou?” Rosy asked, pausing in her step.
“The man who invented the virus the AKs use,” I explained, “the one that took down Japan eighteen years ago. He’s long dead.”
“He was a prophet,” the woman said, “and now the virus is on any computer that ever connected to God’s domain, laying dormant for us to use.”
“What’s your name?” Rosy said. A question she’s been repeating since Reynolds and I returned with her.
“Up yours, dyke,” the woman said, smirking.
Reynolds held out a hand, signaling Rosy not to do anything.
“Give us an alias if you want,” he said, “at least somethin’ to call you.”
“Fair enough,” the woman said, “you can call me Christina.”
“Okay, Christina,” Reynolds said, “you’re claimin’ this Indian woman’s after you. Why’d she take out such a large chunka Kansas then?”
“Covering all her bases,” Christina said.
“I think you’re giving us this story because you somehow know I visited Kali,” I said.
“Am I a hostage here?” Christina asked, “I thought you people were against violence and all that. I didn’t initiate violence or whatever.”
“That’s not true,” a voice from the door to my left said.
I swiveled my office chair, seeing Aveena standing next to Regina, Laura strolling in behind them.
“The AKs do this all the time,” Aveena continued, entering the room, “you people killed friends of mine before.”
I turned back to Christina. She had a bemused look on her face.
“You are claiming allegiance with a cyber-terrorist group,” I said.
“You’re calling us terrorists?” she said, “speak for yourself, forty-eight.”
Aveena marched the length of the room and slapped Christina across the side of the head from behind.
“Hey!” Christina shouted, swiveling around, “you tranny bitch, why-”
Aveena slapped her again. And then she began flailing her arms, smacking Christina over and over, the AK’s thick braids swirling about as her head recoiled. Brie leapt from her chair and pulled Aveena away. Rosy charged forward, pushing Christina back down into her chair before she could get all the way up.
“You’re a murderer!” Aveena shouted, “you attack my friends all the time! Stop lying!”
Christina grinned even as she rubbed her cheek.
“Looks and acts like an animal,” Christina said.
“You want me to let her go?” Brie asked.
“Please do,” Christina said, “I’ll wup her scrawny tranny ass.”
“That’s enough,” Reynolds growled, “stop wastin’ all our time. You wanna leave? Then get the hell outta here.”
Rosy looked irritably at the Colonel, but stepped out of Christina’s way.
“If I wanted to leave,” Christina said, “I’d have done it a long time ago.”
“Then why are you here?” I asked.
“I told you,” she said, “I mean to stop Kali’s heresy. And I think you can help me.”
“Don’t trust her,” Aveena said in a quiet, yet menacing voice.
“How do you even know what we’re up to?” Rosy asked.
Christina looked at me and grinned. “Someone plugged a certain rubber ducky into their computer a few months ago,” she looked to Aveena, “tech acquired from a poor murdered boy.”
“The hostage…?” Aveena looked to me.
“The tech Akira plugged in,” I said, “you’ve been tracking us this whole time, haven’t you?”
Christina shrugged, still grinning.
“That’s how you knew the locations of the trafficker’s houses you published online,” I said, “and how you knew I visited Kali.”
“You’re finally catching on,” Christina said, “your friend Akira secures all her stuff too good. But everything you’ve done was just right there for me to look at. You need to get good at computers, fool.”
I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “So, are you really after Kali?”
Her grin widened.
“Then who were you really after if-” I stopped talking, already seeing what was really happening.
“What’re you talkin’ about?” Reynolds asked.
“He figured it out for himself,” Christina said.
“I told you she was lying,” Aveena murmured.
“You weren’t a victim of the blackouts,” I said, “you caused it, didn’t you?”
Christina beamed proudly, “I wasn’t lying about stompin’ out a heresy.”
“So, you really are an Anonymous Knight?” I asked.
“I am.”
“Then why get your own people killed?” Rosy asked.
“There’s a rift in the AKs,” I said.
Christina gave me a look that said I was spot on.
“I still don’t understand,” Rosy said, looking to me.
“In what way did the heretics deviate?” I asked.
“The Anonymous Knights obey God,” Christina said, “the heretics wanted to control God,” she added with disgust.
“How is it you think we can help each other?” I asked.
“You’re not going to believe what she’s saying, are you?” Aveena objected, pulling herself away from agent Brie and pointing at Christina, “she’s just lying again!”
“I know from reading your files that you’re lookin’ into NexBioGen,” Christina said, “in Wichita. They made the gene doping that turned those kids into…” she looked to Regina, “well, into permanent children.”
Regina kept her gaze on Christina but said nothing.
“It’s terrible what they did to you,” Christina said, looking back to me, “being a tranny is about the worst thing you can be.”
“Fuck you,” Aveena hissed, stepping forward. Brie was able to catch and restrain her before Aveena.
“Can it with the insults,” Reynolds said, “just get on with it.”
“Let’s just say that you guys weren’t the only ones interested in NexBioGen,” Christina said, smirking at Aveena, “those heretics were interested in them, too. That’s why so many of ‘em were in Kansas. I mean, Kansas is already a nice place to be a hacker with their weird state of political fuckery, but the heretics were in Kansas specifically.”
“Why were they interested in NexBioGen?” I asked.
“Your friend Akira hasn’t figured it out yet?” Christina asked, “maybe she has. I was never able to hack her files. But if she had, surely she woulda told you, right?”
“She’s telling more lies!” Aveena snarled.
“Can the seeds of dissent bullshit, too,�
�� Reynolds said.
“Whatever,” Christina shrugged, “NexBioGen has the most powerful computer on the planet. More powerful than the next best computer at Benecorp’s headquarters by several orders of magnitude.”
“Those weird servers,” I said.
“Right,” Christina nodded, “I can’t figure out how and why this mid-size company doing mostly GMO work has the most powerful supercomputer on the planet, but they do. The heretics thought they could use it to control God. To turn God into their own personal oracle and genie.”
“How close were they?” I asked.
“I dunno,” Christina said, “all I know is what God tells us. God gave me the locations of all the heretic hideouts, the passwords to all the networks. God commands and I obey, so I did as God asked, even though…”
“Some of them were friends of yours, weren’t they?” I asked.
Christina gave a weak shrug but said nothing.
“You bitch,” Aveena hissed, “you’re not only killing my friends, you’re killing your own? You AKs are despicable.”
“Everything I say is a lie unless confirms what you already want to believe about me, is that about right?” Christina looked to Aveena.
“What do you want from us?” I asked.
Christina smiled. “You’re going to hack NexBioGen. I want to help.”
“Why?” Rosy asked.
“To find out what the heretics did,” she said, “to protect God.”
“Lies…” Aveena said, once again shaking herself away from Brie, this time walking away back down the length of the room. She stopped by Regina and Laura, bending over to whisper something in small girl’s ear. Regina nodded. All three of them went and sat in the cushioned chairs in the corner of the room. Aveena and Regina opened a link between the two of them so they could listen to music and drown out Christina’s insults.
“You should put a leash on that animal before it-”
“Shut the fuck up,” Rosy growled, “she has every right to be angry at you. And she’s right. We have no reason to believe anything you’re saying.”
Christina shrugged. “You don’t have to believe me about why I’m willing to help you, but the fact that I haven’t gotten up and left yet is demonstrating that I am willing to help.”
“I think we’ll be fine without you,” Reynolds said, “so go ahead and get outta here.”
“Hold on,” I said, “do you have something specific you think you can contribute?”
“Finally, we get to the point,” Christina said, “yes. I told you God supplied me with passwords to networks in Kansas. But God only gave me instructions to shut down certain ones. I have passwords for the others.”
“For CSA and city police in Wichita?” I asked.
“You guessed it,” Christina said.
“Then why haven’t you just hacked ‘em yourself?” Rosy asked.
“The CSA’s Kansas mesh network’s not that easy,” Christina said, “it was online even in Dodge City. I couldn’t shut it down. That’s how they got to the targets so fast. But we’ll need to take it down if we wanna hack NexBioGen. There’s just one problem…”
“Spit it out,” Reynolds said.
“There’s three passwords,” Christina said, “and each one’s twenty-four characters long. And nobody’s gettin’ close to one of their nodes without bein’ searched and havin’ their tech disabled. Now, I’m a genius, but even I can’t memorize seventy-two random ass characters.”
“I can,” I said, “I have an eidetic memory.”
“You have to meet with Dewitt,” Laura said, her monotone voice barely audible from the far corner of the room.
“I can disable the network before going to-”
“We don’t even know where the nodes are,” Brie said, “except the ones in police stations.”
“I can have my contact get me into the police station and-”
“Your bionic eye’ll give you away,” Brie said, “you can alter your face, but if they’re messin’ with your tech…the CSA knows who you are.”
“Well, none of you can…” I was distracted when I saw a flashing in the corner of my eye. Aveena was unconsciously lighting up parts of her bioluminescence in tune with whatever music she and Regina were sharing.
“Unseemly, isn’t it?” Christina asked.
I pointed to Aveena. Her eyes went wide.
“Y-yeah?” she asked.
“You’re going to disable to CSA mesh network,” I said.
“I am?” she glanced around the room at people’s faces, confused.
“You can wear the passwords on your body,” I said, “only visible when you light them up.”
“But I don’t have any passwords in my glow vessels,” she said.
“I’ve seen some of your friends with custom designs,” I said, standing up from my chair, “you could make new ones in whatever pattern you wanted, couldn’t you?”
“I…yeah, I guess,” she said, “I think Salia would know how to…”
“You wanted to help,” I said, “this is your chance.”
“But…what do I need to do?”
“Get yourself arrested,” I said, “I can have my contact arrest you. You’ll be brought to the police station where a CSA node is located. You light up the passwords on your body, get in, and disable it.”
“Arrested?” she asked, worried.
“It’ll be alright,” I assured, hoping that was true, “most of the local police hate the CSA. This’ll be happening during a bunch of anti-CSA protests on the Fourth of July.” I pointed to Regina, who also perked up, eyes wide. “That’s where you can help.”
“How?” she squeaked, prepubescent voice even higher than usual.
“You’ll be part of the protest,” I said, “the Masaristas are used as a symbol for anti-CSA sentiments in Kansas. If you’re there, I bet you could stir the crowd into a frenzy, giving us a perfect distraction to extract Goodwin.”
Regina jumped up from the couch. “I’ll do it.”
“How, uh…” Aveena shifted uncomfortably in her seat, “I mean, like, how do I disable it? The network, I mean?”
I turned to Christina. “Shirou’s virus is dormant on anything that’s evern connected to the internet, isn’t it?”
She nodded slowly, already knowing where I was going.
“You know how to activate it, then,” I said, turning back to Aveena, “and you’ll tell Aveena how to do it.”
“Shirou’s virus is a sacred program that-”
I twirled around to face Christina. “You need our help, too, don’t you?”
“Yes, but-”
“Then this is what we’re doing,” I said, turning to Reynolds, “I mean, if all of you are okay with this.”
“This is all startin’ to sound a bit dicey,” Colonel Reynolds said, “if me and my people’re sposed to be infiltrating, we’ll be spendin’ a lotta time over there. We’re the ones takin’ on a lotta risk.”
“There’s no guarantee this’ll work,” I said, “all we can do is monitor internet traffic and CSA movements from out here and let you know if anything seems suspicious.”
“I’m still willing to move forward,” Rosy said, giving me a nod.
Colonel Reynolds stood quiet for a few moments pondering this, everyone awaiting his decision. It was difficult to tell what he was thinking, eyes staring forward, jaw clenched. Finally, he spoke.
“As long as everyone goin’ understands the risks,” he said, sounding reluctant, “then I’ll sign off on the detail.”
“Okay, good,” I said, “so other than the hiccup on the way home, the mission into Wichita was…successful, though not in the way I thought it would be.” I looked to Aveena, “you’re on board with your part in all this, right?”
“Yeah…” she said, her usually joyful expression dour, “whatever I can do to help.”
“Alright,” I said, “I’ll get in touch with my contact and let him know to expect you. He might not be the arresting officer, but wh
ere you’re going to be arrested is on his beat. He’ll be able to get you out of jail and get you onto a network node. Can you and Salia do what’s needed?”
She nodded slowly.
“You’re the linchpin in this,” I said to her, “Colonel Reynolds and his people won’t be able to move forward until you activate the virus.”
“I understand,” she said.
I looked to Colonel Reynolds, “and you’ll be posing as contractors starting next week.”
He nodded, jaw still clenched.
“You’ll be able to get Tory Goodwin after he’s transferred?” I asked.
“We’re severely undercuttin’ everyone else’s rates,” he said in a neutral tone.
“Okay,” I said, “and while you wait, your people can plant our nodes within range of the target house?”
“Should be able to get it done,” he said without looking at me, still contemplating his decision to move forward with this.
“Good,” I said, “then let’s get this going.”
“You’re not tellin’ ‘em everything, are you?” a voice startled me as I walked down the street.
I turned around, squinting in the mid-morning sun. I was surprised to see Christina trotting to catch up with me.
“I thought for sure you’d had enough of me and my people for a while,” I said as she slowed down.
“I can see you’re the brains of this two-bit operation,” she said as we both started walking. “Why you’re going after NexBioGen makes sense to me. They’re linked to those kids you rescued. But I’m havin’ a hard time wrappin’ my head around why you’re interested in Tory Goodwin.”
“And you think I’m going to explain it to you?”
“Hm,” she said, “I spose not. But I have a theory and I wanted to see your reaction to it.”
I said nothing.
“Your files only started mentioning Goodwin after you got back from India,” Christina said, “and he’s been to India before. As a missionary. I’m sure you’ve already put together that the two may have some kinda history. This Goodwin character’s gonna run for Director in the CSA. Even before he was arrested, his chances were nil. But…his candidacy can get you close to the Director’s mansion, right? Where Kali wants you to muck around with their precious GPFTA negotiations?”
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