by Jerry
“Who was the last person to contact her?”
“You. At 6:33 p.m.”
Donna felt her body turn a degree colder. She been unconscious at 6:33 p.m.
“Jasmine was murdered,” she said. “Governor Grenier had all the motive in the world.”
August Colapinto scowled darkly. “Motive is one thing. What was the means?”
She hesitated. “He hired a vulture to kill her.”
Her employer made a sound that, curiously, reminded her of a horse’s snort. “Come on, Donna. Don’t you think we’ve investigated rumors of memorybox hackers? IT and corporate security found no evidence—in fact, their research proved it’s impossible. We’re quantum encrypted, you know that. No one can break through the firewalls. Every contact is logged, backtraced, and verified.”
“We lost fourteen quasints last year alone—”
“A percentage only slightly higher than the national suicide rate. And remember, quasints aren’t people, so we’re still developing predictive models—”
“Goddam it, Augie, I talk to my clients, so I know that the last thing Jasmine wanted was to die! Talk to Brent McCue. He was active through my wetnet. He saw and heard what they did to me!”
Her supervisor leaned close to his wrist-screen. “Whatever he tells me won’t be admissible in court. Go to the hospital, Donna. You said these people assaulted you, jabbed a needle in your neck? Have the hospital verify all that and send the medical report to corporate security.” He hesitated, and someone stirred behind him, legs moving like time-lapse photography of shifting sand dunes. Quieter, August added, “You’ve had a rough road, Donna. I’m swapping out your portfolio for something easier.”
Her jaw dropped. “Absolutely not!”
“Jasmine is gone, the stupid book thing with McCue is over, and you’ve been dangerously compromised on the Aquameat file. You need a fresh start. I’m getting you replacement clients first thing tomorrow.”
“Augie! I—”
But he had already logged off.
“The keys to the kingdom are given
Our souls shall never be riven!
There will be no keepers and fuck the Grim Reapers and—”
“Off,” Donna snapped, and the autocab radio went dead. The vehicle pulled up in front of her apartment, and she exited to find that her facial cut was bleeding again, mixing red with the saltwater of her tears. Once inside, she staunched the wound with a paper towel, threw her coat into a corner, and ran a bath. As the water filled the tub, she poured herself a brandy.
And another.
By the third, she was feeling the notches of her rage beginning to loosen. At the same time, she felt her depression deepen, a black gulf opening beneath her like some eight-bit pit in an ancient Atari game.
Donna quickly sent her mother an email, confirming that she would refrain from bringing cranberries to Thanksgiving dinner. Better email than voicemail, since Mom didn’t like when she could hear a drunken slur in her daughter’s voice.
She poured a fourth drink and carried it into the bathroom. Then, before she knew what she was doing, she dialed Brent McCue off the orbital memorybox.
He materialized on her field of vision. “Hi, Donna.”
“I need someone to talk to,” she explained.
He sat down on the edge of the tub. He arrived wearing a heavy blue sweater that fit well across his broad chest, but in moments the sweater dematerialized and he was clad in a sleeveless T-shirt emblazoned with the words RUM RUNNER, something more suitable for the humidity of the bathroom.
“You helped me,” he said, “so I’m happy to help you.”
“Do you know what a vulture is? I’m not talking about the carrion bird.”
He blinked his blue eyes. “There’s nineteen different entries in the Wikis.”
“What’s the most recent one?”
“A rumored hacker of particular specialization. Works at breaking through the firewalls and security measures of orbital memorybox post-mort personalities . . . and erases them.”
“I think one of my clients was murdered by a vulture.”
“I have no information on that.”
She stared at him. “No, I guess you wouldn’t. My boss insists it’s impossible, but you were riding my wetnet. . . . You saw Rhea and Fitzgerald assault me in the car. Saw them incapacitate me.”
“With the first needle, yes.”
Donna froze. “What do you mean, the first needle? How many other needles were there?”
Brent seemed to hesitate, or else his personality scaffolding was loading up the play-by-play of what he’d observed. “I couldn’t see everything they did because your eyes were closed most of the time. But they pried your eyes open to take a retinal scan, and that’s when I glimpsed two things: a syringe of blood drawn from your arm, and your handprint being captured on a datapad.”
Donna felt her legs go rubbery; she leaned against the bathroom wall. “They took my fucking blood? And my prints. . . .”
Of course they did, she thought. One of the reasons memoryboxes were considered hacker-proof was that you couldn’t just guess someone’s password or intercept their VPN remote access. There was a multilayered biometric requirement, too.
She regarded a small red spot on her arm. “What else did you see, Brent?”
“Nothing. Your eyes stayed closed after the retina scan.”
“What did you hear?”
“I heard your assailants give the supplies to the man in the passenger seat. I heard him typing on a laptop. Then I heard them open the door and toss you into the gutter outside. Your eyes fluttered open, letting me glimpse enough of Grove Street Cemetery to identify where you were. That’s when I called Clinton.”
The bath overflowed, splashing into the tiles. Donna cursed and twisted the faucet off, her renewed rage blasting away the medicating dullness of the brandies.
She paced around the bathroom, feet splashing in the water. “What can we do?”
Brent frowned. “Do?”
“Yes, do! We need to do something!”
“I’m dead and you were unconscious. We don’t make the most inspiring superhero team, Donna.”
“Did you see the guy in the front seat?”
“Briefly. When Detective Fitzgerald grabbed you, the man turned his head enough for me to catch his profile.”
“Could you reproduce his—”
The words had barely left her throat when Brent McCue transformed into a nightmare image. One side of his face and body remained intact, but his left side altered dramatically: The hair bleached to gray and half his nose sharpened into an aquiline protrusion. One blue eye darkened to brown. The left side of his face withered and pitted, and a black suit with a white shirt shapeshifted out of half his Rum Runner shirt.
“Jesus Christ,” Donna breathed, stricken by the visual.
McCue rotated to display the foreign visage. “Not Jesus,” he said. “Howie Santos.”
She blinked. “What?”
“This face matches that of a passport scanned at LaGuardia Airport on Monday, at 4:51 a.m. The passport is registered to a Howie Santos from Sterling, Virginia.”
The brandy was still clinging to her thoughts; she blinked, feeling her sluggish, alcohol-addled mind clumsily attempt to make sense of what she was hearing. “Are you telling me that you’re . . . what? Hacking into LaGuardia’s security systems?”
The dead bookstore owner laughed and turned his split-face back toward her. “I was never that talented, even when I was alive. No, my friend Clinton is the one hacking into LaGuardia’s security systems. I sent him the face, he did the rest. Looks like you found your vulture.”
Donna gazed in reflexive horror at the Howie Santos side of his face. So this was the bastard that Governor Grenier had used. The penetration of Epitaph Incorporated systems, the murder of Jasmine Melius . . .
. . . and the uglier possibility: that all this wasn’t just an isolated incident, that this memorybox hacker (or others of his
skill-set) had been performing stealthy assassinations on contract for years. Hadn’t Augie admitted that the rate of quasint cybercides was higher than the global suicide rate? If some of those were murders. . . .
A sudden, throbbing desire for vengeance pushed through her alcoholic fugue like a predator navigating silty depths. Donna imagined herself calling the police, or the FBI, or the press, or EI’s corporate security. One by one, she dismissed the possibilities as unhelpful or even counterproductive. Her fury began to drain away as quickly as it had arisen.
Brent reached out to her face; she was embarrassed by how much she wanted to feel his touch.
“This world is always a contest,” he said. “Not between the stale binaries of right and wrong, but between those attempting to remake reality to fit their own vision. Ultimately it’s about—”
Survival of one set of values over another , she thought, remembering the words from an old post uploaded to his personality scaffold.
“—survival of one set of values over another.”
Her eyes flicked to her empty brandy glass. “Save the old speeches, okay? Governor Grenier harassed that poor woman her entire life. He vented his sadistic impulses and got off on the fact that she was his unwilling witness. She waited for death to spill it all, and now she can’t.”
“Maybe Jasmine shared her recordings with you.”
“She didn’t.”
“But she could have.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Donna snapped. “We’re legally prohibited from accessing files once a personality is created. Now that she’s gone, all that stuff is gone, too. Deleted, wiped clean off the blackboard of her soul.”
Brent folded his arms across his chest. “But what if she did share them with you?”
“I just told you that. . . .” She trailed off, hearing the slyness in his tone. “What are you suggesting, Brent?”
“I wasn’t suggesting anything. I’m just a quasint, no different from the other quasints you currently have in your portfolio.” His eyes were like bright, sapphire lights. “What happened to your face?”
* * *
To: Sullivan, Rhea; Fitzgerald, Alvaro; Santos, Howie; Grenier, Johnathan
Message: If you’re wondering who’s sending this, you get as many hints as you have minutes to respond.
1. My good friend Jasmine gave me a rather memorable video of Johnny and what he liked to do to birds. It’s visceral enough that I think I’ll avoid turkey this Thanksgiving.
2. I also have a video series—all recorded hush-hush—about a muzzled dog in the woods behind the Grenier property. Johnny used to go outside every day to “play” with it.
3. I have a video with a nice close-up of the future governor and a possum he caught.
4. I have other videos, too. Things involving the neighborhood kids of 1001 Foghorn Circle, and how Johnny terrorized them day after day.
Turns out that Jasmine had hours and hours of footage . . . and I’m the only one who has it now. The whole saga is set for automatic upload to every news desk in the world.
Unless maybe, just maybe, you’d like to make a deal?
For assaulting me, I figure I’m entitled to a cool million. For murdering Jasmine, make it two million. Johnny Grenier is fond of boasting about his family’s ridiculous wealth: Consider this a final investment in his political career. In cold, hard cash, folks, in a briefcase, like every espionage movie ever made. Two million fucking dollars.
Have it all ready by 11:30 p.m., because that’s when I’ll be calling with directions to my choice of rendezvous.
And let’s be clear: Everyone on this recipient list is to be there, and no one else. Not a single bodyguard, not a single shadow hiding in a car. Call me old-fashioned, but I require a face-to-face meeting . . . and that includes your pet vulture. If these instructions aren’t followed to the letter, the deal’s as dead as Johnny’s career.
* * *
The call from Rhea arrived within three minutes of delivery notification.
* * *
Donna chose the old Colonial Mall for their midnight rendezvous.
In her childhood, it had been like an old-time bazaar, filled with kiosks, outlets, a sprawling food court, fountains, and ceaseless hordes of shoppers. She had often frequented it with her mom and dad and brother, accompanying them on Sundays for shopping and a family lunch overlooking the mall’s vintage carousel.
Now, it was just another dead thing: a hollowed-out husk of desiccated, dark storefronts and immobile escalators like the steps of a lost ziggurat.
Gaining access to the mall proved easy. She arrived by autocab and climbed in through a broken department store window. Stumbling along in the dark, she followed her memory of the place’s floor plan, proceeding to the airy vastness of the food court. Moonlight burned icily from smeared skylights, pooling into a single arena of luminosity encircled by a fortress of shadows and bird-droppings.
Donna felt her pulse quicken. The swarming blackness seemed to study her with invisible menace.
You might die tonight , she thought. What the hell are you doing, Donna ?
The instinct to run nearly overpowered her. She forced herself to take a seat in the empty food court. Her opticlock glowed faintly in the corner of her vision. Time crawled steadily to zero hour.
At 11:30 p.m., she made the call.
At 11:52 p.m., even before she heard the footsteps, her opticlock fizzled and went dark. Her wetnet menu blinked away.
“No recordings, Donna,” came a familiar female voice. “This meeting is dark in every way.”
She looked toward the escalators. Rhea was first to appear over its crest, carrying a handheld EM blocker. She was followed in turn by the massive form of Detective Alvaro Fitzgerald, scowling frightfully at Donna as he came into sight. A scarecrow body followed next, and as it reached the moonlight, she recognized the face: Howie Santos, hacker extraordinaire and murderer of the dead.
The last arrival was Governor Johnathan Grenier.
The man looked exactly as he did in his many press briefings. Handsome, his blond hair neatly side-combed, his face fresh and confidant, his teeth as white as alabaster. He wore a suit and red tie, and sure enough, he was carrying a massive briefcase in one hand.
Grenier made a show of looking around the deserted mall. At last, he whistled and said, “Rhea, we good?”
His campaign manager circled the food court, her high heels making neat, crisp clacks. She glanced at the skylight. She glared into the shadows.
“There are no electronics,” Rhea said at last. She regarded Donna with an expression that slouched toward sympathy. “People do stupid things when they’re upset. But you’ve set a new standard, Donna.”
Donna forced a smile she didn’t feel. “Just trying to survive, Rhea.”
The woman didn’t reply—not in words. She only shook her head, and the resignation in that simple movement confirmed what Donna had known.
Of course there would be no deal.
Grenier was carrying a briefcase, sure. There might even be money in it. But more likely, it wasn’t his briefcase. It was Howie Santos’s bag of biometric magpies, and Donna imagined how it would all play out.
No electronics meant no calling for help, no live video feed. They’ll open me up like a frog in a dissection lab, access my accounts, and search for the videos I lied about having. Not finding anything, they’ll turn their frustrations into an interrogation . . . until I’m screaming my confession.
Then they’d kill her.
She wondered if the governor would do the dirty work himself. Venting his sick pleasures on another living victim.
As if reading her mind, Grenier flashed a winning smile and hoisted the briefcase. “Got your money right here, Ms. Lane. In return, you give us the video file patmatch.” He turned to the hacker. “That’s all you need to run the search-and-destroy, right?”
The silver-haired man barely nodded. He looked distinctly uncomfortable, practically jumping at shad
ows.
“Hi, Howie,” Donna said, giving a little wave.
The hacker’s expression darkened. In an unexpectedly shrill voice, he cried, “You were out cold! How the hell did you find me?”
Donna’s throat was dry. To the governor, she said, “So you really think I’ll take your money? On this most important anniversary, you think I can be bribed?”
Rhea marched over to her table. “Enough, Donna. You aren’t ruthless enough for this business and you’re about to find out what happens when—” She halted mid-stride. “What anniversary?”
“Aquameat. You know, the rock band whose plane went down over the Pacific three years ago today? The band whose final wish was to grant their fanbase access to the digital afterlife, so they could be with their musical gods forever?” Donna stood on trembling legs. “It’s all hidden in the band’s lyrics—if you’re a true fan, you know it’s there!”
Detective Fitzgerald blurted out, “What the hell are you talking about?”
She pointed to the hacker. “You hired this guy to steal the secret code for yourself! But Aquameat fans know better—they want in! I won’t cover for you any longer, and you can’t make me!”
The oily, swarming shadows on the periphery of the food court had seemed to be full of movement before; now those shadows came alive with actual motion. Angry-looking people shuffled out from kiosk kitchens and abandoned storerooms. They marched up the escalators, cutting off routes of escape.
Dozens of people. At least as many as had attacked Donna on the subway the day before. Her email to the local chapter of the insane fanbase had been received, and her instructions meticulously followed.
I’ll get them to confess , she had told them. You just have your people listen quietly and you’ll hear the truth for yourself. I don’t have the band’s afterlife key . . . but the people I’m meeting with do !
Governor Grenier whirled around, his grinning face now an uncontrived expression of terror. “Who the hell are you people? I won’t be intimidated by you. I won’t!”