The Blayze War

by D L Young

  Clone tags. Blayze had heard of them, of course, but she’d never seen one before. A clone tag was a kind of mask. That was the simplest way of thinking about it. Like people at a masquerade wearing the same outfit and the same disguise hiding their faces, impossible to distinguish from one another. Before they’d all plugged in, the devious old jacker must have secretly painted clone tags onto Renn and Jaylene’s avatars. So when it came time for the killer app to do its job, it was suddenly faced with three identical Maddoxes instead of one. Determined to carry out its task, the app had resolved to take out all three targets. It had struck out at the nearest two first, hitting Blayze’s crewmates with fatal brain spikes, killing them instantly and allowing Maddox a few precious moments to make his escape.

  When the tech had lashed out at their own crew, Blayze and Dezmund had both jumped to the same panicked conclusion: they’d been double-crossed. In hindsight it seemed unlikely, but when two of your crewmates are murdered right next to you, sober reasoning pretty much goes out the window. Adrenaline and animal panic take over.

  “You think Maddox knew something?” Blayze asked.

  “No,” Dezmund said, shaking his head. “There’s no way.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “He was covering his ass, simple as that. He didn’t take the gig at face value because he doesn’t trust anyone, never has, outside of Old Man Rooney maybe. That’s Maddox. That’s who he is, and it’s why he’s lasted so long.”

  A part of Blayze wanted to grill Dezmund further. Give him a good tongue-lashing for not expecting the old jacker to pull some trick. For not finding the clone tags before they’d all plugged in. But then the larger part of her decided against it. Both she and Dez had checked and rechecked each jacker’s gear, wares, and data signatures, including Maddox’s. Truth be told, they’d both failed to find the old jacker’s subterfuge. And what was done was done. They had other problems now.

  She blew out a long breath. “So now we have to think about our next move.”

  “Hunker down,” Dezmund said. “That’s the next move.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We just tried to kill him. That’s all he knows right now. He doesn’t know why, probably doesn’t care why. We tried to kill him and we blew it. And so now he’s got no choice but to come after us. That’s how these things get worked out. Nobody forgives and forgets in this business. You start a war between jacking crews, and you’re in it until one side wins and the other side is dead or run out of town.” He paused. “And Maddox isn’t the type to run out of town.”

  Blayze stared at Dez for a long moment, feeling some of her anger return. The little bitch had his head up his ass as usual. The mess they were in was far worse than some has-been datajacker’s payback. And if Dezmund were as smart as he was vain, he would have seen as much by now. But he didn’t, so she’d have to spell it out for him.

  “Your old buddy might be a slick operator,” she said, “but he’s not the one we should be worried about. Not by a long shot.”

  12 - Just Because

  Beatrice had been in the shower when the salaryman called and asked for a ride. He was in trouble again. When wasn’t he? She’d stood there for a moment, letting the steaming water wash over her skin, as he’d waited for her response. He hadn’t explained what had happened, what kind of mess he was in this time. He didn’t seem to want to over the connection, saying only that he needed a ride and couldn’t think of anyone else to call. Alarms had gone off inside her. Warning. Danger. Stay away from the salaryman’s cage.

  With a silent curse, she’d defied herself and dispatched her rented hover to go and pick them up.

  What was it about this datajacker? He wasn’t rich, wasn’t connected. He wasn’t bad looking, but neither was he head-turningly handsome. He was good in bed, but she’d had better. And he smoked. She so hated the smoking. Beatrice had had many lovers. Men, women. Most around her age, but a few much older and far younger. If asked, she could have pointed to something in each of them that had first attracted her. A sense of humor, a commanding presence, a flirtatious lilt in the voice, a pair of well-muscled legs. Beatrice had a thing for legs. But with Maddox, she didn’t know what it was, why she felt so inclined to him, so connected. Even during their year apart, wholly out of contact with each other, she rarely went more than a day without thinking of him. Where he was. What he was doing. What kind of mess he was probably in.

  Was it because they’d helped each other get through a life-or-death crisis? Maybe that explained it. The kind of bond soldiers had after going through some horrific firefight. A bond forged by an unlikely shared survival. Or maybe they were simply like souls. They’d both been born into poverty, and they’d both managed to use their respective talents to hustle a way out of it. Both saw the world for what it was, a teeming, chaotic mess populated by hunters and prey.

  Or maybe it was something else. Something she couldn’t name or put her finger on. Maybe she was simply a girl who liked this particular boy for reasons unknown, despite how much trouble he was or how many nasty cigarettes he smoked. For someone as fiercely independent, as wholly in control of every aspect of her life as Beatrice, her inability to solve this personal mystery was infuriating. For every other question in her life, she could find an answer, but for this particular why, the unsatisfactory explanation she finally, reluctantly, accepted was “just because.” She refused to entertain the notion of love, of being in love. There was no place for love in a mercenary’s life. So she’d settled on “just because” and left it at that. A mystery of the universe like those ancient lines in the Peruvian desert or the way a cat always manages to land on its feet. Some things you just couldn’t explain.

  In a terrycloth bathrobe with the hotel’s logo sewn onto the pocket, Beatrice sat on the soft leather chair of her suite’s living room. Her legs were crossed, and on her feet she wore matching terrycloth slippers, one of which she dangled loosely on her toes.

  Sipping a cup of herbal tea, she said, “This is the part where I say ‘I told you so.’”

  Maddox and Tommy sat across from her on the sofa. The kid rocked back and forth nervously. Whatever hell they’d run into, it must have been pretty bad if the kid was still visibly shaken up over it. Tommy Park, former street punk and Anarchy Boy, might not have been around the block as many times as the suite’s other two occupants, but he was no lightweight. She knew that from experience.

  “I really ought to start charging you,” she said, setting down her cup. “But something tells me you can’t afford my rates.”

  Maddox went to light a cigarette. She considered stopping him, then thought better of it. The salaryman looked pretty hard hit as well. Not as much as the kid, but definitely out of sorts. A bit of nicotine in his system would soothe his jangled nerves.

  “So what happened?” she asked.

  Maddox walked her through it, recounting the job, how the crew had been jumped by some stealthy killer tech, how the standbys hadn’t pulled him and Tommy out like they were supposed to.

  “Maybe it wasn’t a setup,” she suggested. “Maybe you just ran into something they hadn’t counted on, and they panicked.” It happened. You never knew how someone might react in a crisis until the shit actually hit the fan. Some froze, others lost their shit. She’d seen that kind of thing plenty of times in her line of work.

  “They were trying to take me out,” Maddox insisted.

  “Then their aim was pretty bad,” she said.

  “Actually, it wasn’t,” he said, explaining the precaution he’d secretly taken, the insurance measure only he and Tommy had known about. He called it a clone tag, then he described how it worked. Had Maddox not unplugged when he had, he would have been the killer tech’s third victim.

  “So you painted targets on their backs,” she said. “Remind me not to plug in with you anytime soon.”

  Maddox sucked on his cigarette. “I didn’t think I’d need it. Before we plugged in, when I tagged th
ose avatars, the whole thing felt like overkill.” He blew smoke.

  “All right, then,” Beatrice said, “so it was like I told you before. The whole thing was a sham. A way to get rid of you without looking like they did it themselves. From what you told me, your friend Dezmund craves attention like the politicians I work for. People like that, the kind who love being in the public eye, they hate bad publicity. They’ll do anything to avoid it. And I mean anything.”

  Maddox nodded. He still looked a bit shell-shocked. “Yeah, that’s pretty much Dez. I guess I should have listened to you.”

  Since she’d already said I told you so, she didn’t repeat it now. And from the look on his face, not to mention the regret in his tone, it was clear he knew he’d messed up.

  “Well, you both made it out of there in one piece,” she said. “That’s all that matters.”

  The salaryman smoked. “Yeah, there’s that.” Then he turned to the kid. “She say anything to you?”

  “Who?” Tommy asked.

  “Your little girlfriend back there.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. You two were looking pretty cozy the last couple days.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” the kid said, offended.

  “You tell me,” Maddox said. “She say anything strange about the gig? Drop any hints you forgot to tell me about?”

  “The fuck, bruh?” Tommy protested. “You think I knew something going in? She didn’t tell me jack. And if she did, I would have said something.”

  “You sure about that?”

  The kid shot up to his feet, his face red and contorted with rage. “You think…? You think I’d…?” Too worked up to get the full sentence out, the kid turned and stomped off into the kitchen.

  “Jesus, salaryman,” Beatrice said. “That was a bit below the belt, wasn’t it? That kid wouldn’t sell you out in a million years.”

  Maddox let out a long, tired breath. “I know, I know.”

  He started to rise up and follow after the kid, but Beatrice put a hand on his forearm. “Let him cool off,” she said. “Poor kid’s head is still spinning.”

  The datajacker seemed to agree. He sat back down, let out another long breath, and ran his hand through his hair. “That makes two of us.”

  ***

  While Maddox and Tommy got a few hours of much-needed sleep, Beatrice hit the hotel gym and then shopped for clothes in the underground retail center near the hotel. When she returned, she called room service and ordered a late breakfast. Tommy, rested and no longer pouting, devoured a three-egg omelet. Youth, Beatrice reflected. How fast they bounce back. Maddox, still looking a bit ragged, scanned the police feeds in his specs, the same as he’d done when he’d first arrived at the suite. Again, he found nothing about him or any mention of a breach at BNO. It was as if the whole thing had never happened.

  “At least the cops aren’t after us,” Maddox told her, removing his lenses and taking a seat at the dining table.

  “You sure about that?” Beatrice asked.

  He nodded. “When you’ve done this kind of thing as long as I have, you know how to read the signs.” He buttered a slice of toasted bread.

  “Silver lining,” Beatrice commented. “So what now?”

  Maddox didn’t answer immediately. He glanced over at Tommy. The kid stopped chewing and stared expectantly back at the salaryman.

  “I have to take him out,” Maddox said grimly.

  “Fucking right,” Tommy agreed, biting into a sausage link.

  Beatrice was afraid Maddox was going to say that. Afraid because in that kind of business, the salaryman was out of his depth. He was a thief, not an assassin. If you needed to steal intellectual property or cripple a rival’s datasphere, Blackburn Maddox was your man. But killing was definitely not his bag. She didn’t think he even owned a gun.

  “Not really your forte, that kind of thing,” she said, voicing her thoughts.

  He shrugged. “It’s not, but what choice do I have? Dezmund and his little wench won’t stop coming after me now. They botched it the first time, and now they’ll be worried about me coming after them.”

  So now it was kill or be killed, in other words. “What about kissing and making up?” she suggested. “Is that totally out of the question?”

  Tommy laughed. “You kidding, mama? You can’t lay down like a dog when somebody tries to take you out. I thought you were street, lady.”

  “Eat your breakfast,” she scolded. “I wasn’t asking you.” Then to Maddox: “Well?”

  He said nothing, only shaking his head. There was a grim determined look on his face she’d seen once before: when he’d learned a killer AI had murdered his friend. Maddox wasn’t going to try and make peace, and he wasn’t going to leave the City. He was going to take care of this bloody business once and for all, and she knew there was little chance of talking him out of it.

  ***

  Beatrice rescheduled her outbound flight for the following day, and Maddox and the kid stayed in the suite that night. Maybe he’d change his mind about things before she had to leave. Men were more open to suggestion after sex. Sure, it was a lame manipulation, but she justified it by telling herself she might be saving his life.

  She lay on her side facing him in the dark as he smoked a postcoital cigarette, a concession she’d reluctantly made to keep him in a relaxed state of mind. She’d practiced saying the words to him in her head, but now that the time had come, she knew they’d come out awkward anyway. She’d asked him this same question once before, and he’d said no. Would it sound needy or weak, asking him a second time? Or would anything like that even cross his mind? He was in trouble, after all, and he was unlikely to see her offer as anything but a way out of it.

  Oh, screw it. Stop overthinking it and ask him already.

  “Why don’t you go with me?” she said, her hand on his chest.

  The question hung in the air for a while. “I can’t leave the City,” he finally said. “Not now.”

  “Why not? I can get you a passport in a few hours. The kid too. We can be out of here by noon. Leave all this mess behind.”

  “This mess is my life.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” she suggested.

  He blew smoke. “What would I do with myself anywhere else? Jacking’s the only thing I know, and the big jacking jobs are here.”

  “How old are you, Blackburn?” It was the first time she’d used his first name in a long time.

  “Thirty-two,” he said.

  “Outside of Rooney, how many datajackers do you know who’ve made it past your age without dying or getting thrown in jail?”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. “None, but I’m the most careful one I know. So maybe I’ll set a record.”

  “Be serious,” she said. “You can’t do this forever. You’re lucky you’ve made it this far. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  He didn’t say anything to that. She knew he couldn’t. They both knew the datajacking game was anything but a long-term career. Even the most prudent, risk-averse jackers rarely had careers spanning more than a decade. Technology changed too quickly. You couldn’t possibly keep current on everything. And the longer you stayed in the game, the more the odds stacked against you.

  He broke her gaze and stared up at the ceiling. “I tried the straight life, remember? Didn’t work for me.” He tapped his cigarette over the nightstand ashtray. “I’m sorry, I can’t go with you. Not now, at least. I’ve got to take care of this.”

  They didn’t speak for a long time. She thought about leaving it there. He wasn’t coming with her, and he seemed stubbornly resolved to his fate. Screw him, a voice inside of her said. If he wants to march down suicide road, let him. But then the moment passed, and the greater part of her realized she didn’t want to be sitting in her home twenty-four hours from now, regretting things left unsaid.

  “That chip on your shoulder,” she said. “It’s going to be the end of you, you know.”

&nb
sp; “What are you talking about?”

  “That stuff you’ve been carrying around since Rooney died. Guilt or mourning or anger or whatever it is that keeps you from…”

  “From what?” he said.

  She clasped his chin and turned his face to hers. “From a lot of things.” Then she added, “From me.”

  Flustered, he pulled away and ran an anxious hand through his hair.

  “Have you ever considered,” she said, “that maybe he wasn’t the only one you could ever trust?” Her words came out all wrong, sounding more like a reproach than she’d intended. Christ, she was terrible at this kind of thing.

  He reached over and stubbed out his cigarette. “I’m exhausted, Bea. I need some sleep.” He turned his back to her and laid his head on the pillow.

  She watched him for a while, until his breathing slowed down and she was sure he was asleep. Reaching out, she gently stroked his hair. Maybe he’d think differently in the morning, once he’d rested up.

  Or maybe that was just her foolish hope.

  13 - Lies

  Early the next morning Maddox stood next to the bed. Beatrice was still asleep, breathing slow and deep, her face half-obscured by her pillow. The sun wasn’t up yet, and the dim light filtering in from the opaqued window fell over her features. Her nose was a little crooked. The shadow’s angle, he noticed, changed halfway from the bridge to the tip. A tiny variation, barely noticeable unless you looked closely. Had she broken it at some point? Or maybe it had always been that way, and somewhere there was a mother or a father with the same nose? This new small detail reminded him how little he knew about her past. There was a whole lifetime of stories that was still a mystery to him. Her childhood had been poor like his, that much he knew. But had it been a happy one? Had she been the local tough of her floor, beating up all the boys? Did she have brothers and sisters? Had a lover ever left her high and dry? Had she been monogamous? Did she carry a burden with her, some dark secret that might surprise him?