by Mel Odom
We walked back to the sec command center and found the door open. A guy wearing captain’s bars stood in the doorway. “What’s going on?”
“The turbine caught fire,” I said. “The maintenance manager said we had to make a statement about the accident?”
“Is it going to blow up?”
“I don’t know. It looks really bad.”
Cursing, the captain stuck his head back inside the door. “Hsu!”
“Sir?” A young lieutenant came to attention inside the office.
“Have them fill out the property-damage forms on our terminal.”
“Yes sir.” The lieutenant walked forward.
“I’m going to go see how bad this is.”
“Yes sir.”
When the captain disappeared around the corner, I followed the lieutenant into the room and tranked him, catching his body before it hit the floor.
“Find the terminal,” I told Is0bel.
She nodded.
Duncan grabbed the lieutenant’s other arm and helped me position the unconscious man in the chair behind the desk. We slumped him forward, like he’d decided to take a nap.
The terminal was in the second room back. I watched Is0bel through the open doors as she sat in front of the keyboard. Duncan stood over the cam console and watched all the activity taking place around us and on some of the other floors. Evidently Is0bel’s spoofware was still up and moving like a will o’ the wisp.
“She does good work,” he commented.
“Yeah.”
“If we get out of here alive, it’s gonna be hard to think about moving on from those two.”
Before I had time to think about that, Is0bel and Gobbet rejoined us.
“Okay,” the dwarven decker said, “I got the other passcode and launched another wave of spoofs. Tsang’s mainframe is twice as infected now. We’re good to go.”
Everyone was watching the flaming turbine and our still-cursing “boss” struggle to shut it down as we walked to the elevators. No one saw us go.
On the elevator, Is0bel looked at me. “Ready?”
I checked the team. We were all nervous, mainlining adrenaline. “There’s no way out now but through.”
Duncan nodded.
“Let’s do it,” Gobbet said.
Is0bel entered the codes, and the elevator rose.
Chapter 87
ASIST
We drew our real pistols as we watched the floors click by. Everyone knew we were going to get bloody from this point on. The elevator slowed and I stood in the doorway with my pistol tucked behind me
When the doors opened, three guards stood before us in the small sec checkpoint. All of them were on edge.
“This is a restricted area,” the sergeant said. “I’ll need to see your ID.”
I didn’t hesitate, just stepped forward, lifted my pistol, and fired three rounds into his face as his eyes widened, becoming bigger targets. I had no mercy for these people. They were holding the old man, and I remembered how he’d looked in the Plastic-Faced Man’s vid.
The sergeant went down, dead before he hit the floor. Duncan took out another with a steady stream of fire, and Gobbet threw a wave of force that picked up the last man and hurled him into a wall.
I was moving before the final man hit the floor, running my hands over the sergeant’s uniform till I found his keycard. We took their rifles. Then I followed the hallway forward. It only went in one direction, no offshoots, and ended at a massive sec door.
My heart pounded as I slid the keycard through the maglock’s reader. I didn’t know what we were going to find. I didn’t know if there was going to be anything left of Raymond Black. Maybe he would only be Edward Tsang now, a man Duncan and I had never known.
The door slid to one side.
At the other end of the room, a mass of electronics fed into a large coffin-shaped container with thick transplas windows. Inside the contraption, I could just make out a human figure.
“Raymond,” Duncan breathed, and pain filled his voice as he pushed past me.
I followed woodenly, telling myself I should be on guard, but all I could concentrate on in that moment was that small person inside that huge machine. Ozone filled the air. The security lights bathed everything in blue. The whole world felt surreal.
As I got closer, I made out the old man, recognized him at once. Duncan had his hands on the transplas, calling the old man’s name again and again. If he wasn’t the same man we’d known growing up, I knew Duncan wouldn’t ever be the same again either.
From the machines surrounding him, I knew the old man was still alive. He reclined on what looked like a surgical couch. Cables snaked into his head.
“Impressive setup.” Is0bel stood beside me and seemed in awe of the computer hardware. “Josephine Tsang must’ve spent a fortune on this.”
“With all the money she stole from Prosperity,” I growled, “she certainly had it to spend.”
“Help me,” Duncan pleaded. “Help me get him out of there.”
I just looked at him, not knowing what to do. I hadn’t ever felt that helpless, not on the streets, not even in lockdown.
“Hey,” Gobbet called from another computer terminal. “I’ve got some kind of instructions here for setting up a disconnect.”
Is0bel joined her, then shoved her out of the way. She flicked through the screens in rapid succession. After a couple of minutes, she shook her head.
“This is hopeless.”
“Don’t tell me that,” Duncan said.
A look of guilt covered Is0bel’s face. “We can’t shut this thing down according to the normal specs. We don’t have the time, or the clearance, or the personnel. Maybe if we had a week, Echelon security clearance, and an army of lab techs…but we don’t. We’re gonna have to improvise.”
“You’re talking about improvising with his brain,” Duncan protested.
“We. Don’t. Have. A. Choice,” Is0bel said. “Either we come up with something else right now, or we leave him here.”
I looked at Duncan and put a hand on his shoulder. “We can’t leave him. Not if there’s a chance to save him. Josephine Tsang will tighten security even more. We won’t have a chance to do this again.”
Duncan breathed out and nodded.
Is0bel kept flipping through screens. Her eyes widened in excitement. “Wait. I may have something.”
Duncan stared at her.
“According to this,” Is0bel tapped the screen, “I might be able to hack in and manually reprogram Raymond Black’s memories.”
“You mean—go into his mind?” Duncan asked.
“More or less, yes.”
“Have you ever done that?”
“No.”
Duncan clenched his hands into fists again and again. “You could mess him up.”
“Duncan,” I said gently, “he might already be messed up. Let her do what she can.”
“What we can.” Is0bel gazed at me. “I’m not going in there alone. I don’t know Raymond Black that well. I won’t know any of his memories.”
“I can go,” Duncan said.
Is0bel looked at him, then at me. “I need someone with a cool head,” she said. “Whatever Raymond Black’s locked under, it’s going to be covered in ice. I can’t go in there and be distracted.”
“Duncan,” I said, “she’s right.”
He took a deep breath and let it out, and I knew he was barely holding himself back from arguing. For a second, he hung in the balance, unable to answer.
“If this goes wrong,” Is0bel said, “Raymond Black could be lost forever. He’ll either be a vegetable. Or he’ll die.” She paused. “But this is the only chance we have to get him.”
Duncan cursed, but he nodded and put his hands on my shoulders. “Bring him back.”
“I will.” I sat down beside Is0bel, and she jacked us both into the Matrix.
Chapter 88
Memories
The Matrix presented itself in gold and sand
al brown this time, and everything gleamed under soft amber lighting. Facsimile temples stood in rows across the grid. Tracked overlays showed the routes of Watcher ice.
“We’re gonna go slow,” Is0bel said. “If you see something I miss, let me know right away. Once things go wrong inside here, they’ll go wrong fast.”
“Okay.”
Is0bel moved like a skater, slow and smooth. Watcher ice that looked like floating jellyfish zipped along, covering the area. When she couldn’t avoid them, she hit them with spoofing software, then glided by.
Once through the temples, she stopped in front of a giant, sloping gate that glowed bright orange-gold. Two massive Chinese dragons or lions—it was hard to tell which—stood on either side of it.
Is0bel hacked in, spinning through presented sequences. I wanted to help, but she was so much faster and more competent at it. In seconds, the ice blew apart and faded away.
We went through to the next area and found a machine standing in front of what seemed to be four access points to different sections of the Matrix.
“What are those?” I asked.
“It looks like Raymond’s brain has been dumped into four different repositories.” Is0bel looked at the machine in front. “This is an engram coder. We have to figure out the sequence of those memories and input them in the correct order to bring Raymond Black back.”
“How do we know which is which?”
“We’ll have to go into those nodes to find out.”
“You’ve got to hack four more sites?”
“We have to hack them,” she told me. Then she sped off to the first one.
Is0bel jacked into the node, and we crept through overlapping fields of watcher ice. I sat in the back of her mind like a navigator in the back of a fighter craft. I wasn’t sure what Is0bel did, or all the spoofware and malware she used, but she moved through them all, relentless.
When she unlocked the Blocker ice in the first node and accessed the file, blurry images took shape in sparkling light. A small boy hunkered down on the bank of a small pond. I saw his reflection in the water because I was inside the boy’s mind.
A single tear dropped onto the pond’s surface and sent ripples eddying out, fracturing the boy’s image. He reached out and traced a Pinyin character on the water, one I recognized easily.
Father.
“Raymond lost his father early,” I said, and that made me remember how I’d never known my parents. “He never got over it.”
Retreating to the node with the engram machine, Is0bel took us into the second. More ice protected the area, and this time she didn’t catch them all. We got flagged by one of the Watcher ice programs.
Is0bel cursed as she hit it with a lethal program that dissipated it.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“We got noticed,” she said. “If we get too loaded up with their snooperware, the Matrix will bounce us out.”
I stayed quiet then, knowing that it was likely we wouldn’t get another chance to rescue the old man.
Behind the Blocker ice protecting the second engram of memories was a gymnastics studio. Before us, a twelve-year-old boy stood in a gi, hands clenched in a defensive posture.
“You better know kung fu, mister,” the boy said.
“I know lots of things.” The voice was Raymond’s, and I’d heard him tell me that several times throughout our years together. He’d always been patient and firm. “Are you smart enough to hear them?”
“This was his studio in Seattle,” I told Is0bel. “It was where he worked with homeless kids and made sure they were taken care of.”
“Sounds like a good man,” Is0bel said.
“He was—” Damn it. “He is a good man.”
In the third node, I woke up in a sweat-soaked bed in a tiny room. For a second, I thought I was back on the Bolthole. I struggled up out of the sheets and stumbled into the bathroom. When I looked in the mirror, I saw Raymond’s face looking back at me.
He looked a lot older than when I’d left home. His hair was gray and his skin was sallow. He looked terrified.
“This must have been right before Raymond left Seattle to come to Hong Kong,” Is0bel said.
“Yeah, I think you’re right.”
She took us on to the fourth node, banging through the various types of ice till we reached the last series of engrams.
We walked through a long hallway. On either side of us, men and women in black businesswear so similar they looked like uniforms, watched through glass walls as we passed.
A door blocked the hallway, and I knew an office lay beyond. A brass nameplate shone mirror-bright on the big wooden door.
Edward Tsang
Vice President of Special Projects
“These memories are from when Raymond worked with his mother,” I said. “Back when he was overseeing the Prosperity Project.”
“That’s the last of them,” Is0bel said. “You ready to do this?”
“Yeah.” My mouth felt dry, which was weird because while I was there, I didn’t have a mouth.
Back at the engram machine, we entered in the memories, moving from oldest to newest. Then Is0bel triggered the integration process.
Chapter 89
What Waits In Darkness
“Dad!”
I opened my eyes, back in the ASIST room now. Feeling woozy and sluggish, I forced myself to my feet.
Duncan stood over the capsule holding Raymond. He stared at me. “Did you do it? Did you save him?”
I couldn’t answer. There had been no indication inside the Matrix. Raymond’s thin chest rose and fell, so I knew he was still alive. I joined Duncan at the capsule.
He returned his attention to the old man. “Dad?” he said in a louder voice.
Inside the capsule, Raymond’s eyes flickered open. His voice was hoarse when he spoke. “…Duncan?”
“I’m here, yeah.” Tears ran down Duncan’s face.
My own eyes stung, and my vision blurred.
Raymond looked at me too, and called my name. He smiled. “Good…to see you both.” He reached toward us, but the transplas prevented him.
I found the latches and released them. Duncan gathered Raymond up in his arms and cradled him.
Is0bel spoke in a small voice. “No time to catch up, guys, sorry. We gotta move.”
Gun in hand, I walked back to the door, checked the sec cam, saw no one, and led everyone out. We headed to the elevator and hit the button to the basement, where we’d planned our exfil.
Alarms hooted behind us, muting as the elevator doors closed and we began the long descent.
By the time we reached the MTR station, Raymond was walking successfully under his own power. He breathed raggedly, but regularly, and I took that as a good sign.
I called Racter and Gaichu, found them both at the Bolthole, and asked them to meet us at the subway station in Heoi. And to come heavily armed.
On the train, we surrounded Raymond and watched the other passengers. All of them avoided us, and most of them didn’t even look at us. They could smell the blood and death on us.
At Heoi, Racter and Gaichu were waiting. In a back corner of the subway platform in front of a closed gift shop where the shadows were most dense, they passed out the extra weapons they’d brought.
“Raymond,” Duncan said in a gentle voice. “Are you all right?”
The old man smiled up at him. “I fought…against the reprogramming. I didn’t…lose myself.” Dark circles had formed around his eyes. “I know you have a lot of questions. I’d planned to explain it all when you arrived in Hong Kong.”
“We’re here now, Ray,” Duncan said.
“You are here.” Raymond smiled up at Duncan and clapped him on the shoulder. “And I am grateful for all you’ve done for me.” For a moment, I thought he was going to pass out, then he took a breath and straightened up again. “My real name is Edward Tsang. I’m the only son of Josephine Tsang, the CEO of Tsang Mechanical Services, and the heir to the corp. B
efore I left Hong Kong, I was the Vice President of Special Projects. The up-and-coming star of the company.”
“If you were the golden boy,” Is0bel asked, “why’d you leave?” Her tone carried a little harshness, and I knew she faulted Raymond for some of the way her world was.
Raymond frowned. “My division was shut down. Disbanded. One of my projects…failed.”
That was a surprise. Raymond had never failed at anything I knew of.
“Prosperity?” Duncan asked.
Sickness twisted Raymond’s face and he looked like he was about to pass out. “You’ve heard of it, I see,” he said finally. “I was part of the project my mother envisioned…to rebuild Kowloon Walled City. A walking neighborhood for underprivileged citizens. It was supposed to be fully integrated, with job training programs, co-op childcare, drug counseling centers. It was a new approach to low-income housing in the East. The springboard to prosperity for hundreds of thousands.”
“Yeah,” Is0bel said, shaking her head, “that doesn’t sound like the place I grew up in.”
“Mother personally oversaw every aspect of the project,” Raymond said, “to ensure every detail was executed properly. Chose each project manager herself, chaired regular status meetings with architects, builders, visited the worksite for surprise inspections. She was driven to make her renewed, revitalized Walled City a success.”
“So that was Prosperity?” I asked. “Another low-income housing project?”
“No.” Raymond shook his head. “The Walled City wasn’t the Prosperity Project.” He closed his eyes for just a moment. “Prosperity was something I built at the center of the Walled City.” His eyes suddenly rolled back into his head.
At the same instant, a giant hand pressed down on my chest, squeezing the air from my lungs. I tried to suck in a breath and couldn’t. I tried to move, but I was frozen in place. Gray spots blurred my vision, then expanded till I couldn’t see anything else. I felt like I was back in the Matrix, back in the dream with the sprawl closing in on me. Panic screamed inside me, demanding release.