by Brad C Scott
Nodding to the armored reclaimers standing duty, I enter an elevator and head down.
Jace’s situation may be parallel to my own. If they’re gunning for her… Am I next? Worthy would say I’m being paranoid, but it’s only paranoia if they’re not out to get you. Has all the surveillance been the prelude to an assassination attempt? Will I be ready?
Questions I never thought to ask myself before Los Angeles.
◊ ◊ ◊
“Sir! Redeemer Adams! You can’t go back there!”
“It’s all right, Amy,” I say to the harried receptionist while staying ahead of her.
I had to be quick to get past reception – the tech-heads frown on field operatives having the run of this place. Some of our most gifted programmers and engineers work here in the Office of Human Interface Technologies, an insular agency buried deep in the nuclear-hardened bowels of HQ. A few shoot me nervous looks as I walk past, though most are too absorbed with their holoscreens to care about the intruder, their hunched figures imprisoned within cluttered cubicle walls. Posters of virtual realities and anime adorn those walls, while legions of colorful figurines occupy wall shelves. Fortunately, the man I’m here to see has more practical toys.
“But sir,” says the receptionist, “he’s not to be disturbed!”
Reaching the vault door, I ignore the warning light and open it.
“What the devil!” exclaims Master Tech Specialist Cato, looking up from a holodisplay and removing a pair of earbuds. “Malcolm Adams, as I damn well live and breathe. I’d invite you in, but you’re already here. What can I do for you?”
“Master Tech,” I say, glancing back at the receptionist. She gives a melodramatic sigh and about-faces away, shoulders squared. “Thank you, Amy,” I call after her.
She raises a hand and mutters something about my upbringing.
I enter the vault, door sealing behind me. “Sorry to interrupt.”
The circular concrete chamber ringed by backlit argent panels would be roomy enough for twenty if Cato didn’t need it for his hoard. I’ve never met a man so attached to his gadgets, the shelving lining the curving walls packed with their clutter. Banks of holoscreens fill the gaps between, an aura of ever-shifting colors permeating the chamber from the borealis effect syncing across them. Console-topped counters and workbenches parse the floor space, the later buried beneath book stacks, tools, more gadgets, and the occasional coffee mug. Close to a dozen drones suspend from ceiling-mounted cables, all different, all deactivated save one. Untethered, its black, tapered body rotates slowly in place beyond Cato’s left shoulder.
“No, no, no problem.” Cato grabs my hand and gives it a vigorous shaking, his frameless spectacles wobbling on his nose. His roughshod appearance – wispy auburn hair akimbo, flannel tie at half-mast, and maroon lab coat patterned by scorch marks – reinforces his consistency. Cato’s chronic disarray is a fixed point in an otherwise uncertain world.
“I need your help with something.”
“Of course, of course,” he says, stepping back and knocking over a stack of holopads perched atop a pile of boxes. Flinching around his smile, he manages not to look down as they clatter to the floor.
“Should I come back later?”
“No, no, heavens no, I was just tinkering,” he says, sweeping his arms around and tipping over a steel tray. It clangs off the floor, small circuit boards scattering. In response, he crosses his arms in tight and says, “Unsuccessfully, I might add. So: how can I help?”
When he’s not down here in the bowels “tinkering” – whatever that might imply – Cato advises the Director and division heads on the interface technologies we use. He was on the ground floor in creating the system we use to tag and track criminals. I’ve stayed in touch with him since my Academy days – Cato was my favorite instructor despite giving me low marks – though his absent-mindedness makes him hard to pin down. His recklessness and enthusiasm more than compensate.
“May I?” I ask, pointing to one of the room’s workstations.
“May you what?” He squints at the datastick I hold up. “Oh, get right on it.”
Plugging in the datastick with Jace’s data, I activate the touchpad built into the counter’s surface. Seconds later, I pull up the DSS dossier for Randall Conry, one of the former enforcers whose DNA was left at the LA crime scene, projecting it on the holoscreen before us.
“Who’s that fellow?” asks Cato, leaning in while adjusting his spectacles. “Looks a wee dodgy for my tastes.”
Conry’s dossier picture looks like something off the FBI’s most-wanted list. His hard-eyed, clean-shaven face stares out with a brute’s intent. I was too groggy and hungover this morning to do more than a cursory review of his file over two cups of coffee, but then as now, something about him seems damned familiar. “This is the man I need you to find for me.”
“Oh, no, no, you’re no’ asking what I think you are. Are you?”
Manipulating the touchpad, I expand the file picture to its max size and study it. Damned familiar – where have I seen this man before? It’s the eyes that do it, black as the end of the road and devoid of mercy. No, it can’t be…
“Malcolm?”
Krayge. It’s him. Has to be – the eyes never lie. He must have undergone plastic surgery since this file picture was taken, but it’s him. So, he was there at the ambush. He helped murder my brethren, then with the house cleaning at the electrical substation. Afterward, he got me into his clutches and entertained himself with my screams. What was it he said: You’ve caused me a world of trouble. Consider this my way of saying thank you. So it was personal for him.
“Malcolm, what’s wrong?”
I realize my fists are pressed into the counter’s surface so hard the glass overlay is cracked. Pulling my hands up and forcing them to my sides, I do my best to swallow the rage. “Randall Conry. A suspect in my investigation. This is important.”
“Aye, it would have to be, wouldn’t it? What’s got you so worked up?”
“This is the man who tortured me in Los Angeles. The face is different, but… I recognize him. Claimed to be working for NDL.”
“Is that right?” He reaches over to the touchpad, minimizing the picture to peruse the dossier’s highlights. “Jace sent you this, did she? Not much here, really. Looks to be most of his work was classified. Are you sure about him? Once an enforcer and all that.”
Cato’s right – enforcers rarely go over to the other side. Maybe he’s a double agent, playing both sides of the street, DSS and NDL, but to what end? All I know with certainty is that, no matter what he calls himself or who he works for, Krayge is an asshole through and through.
“Can you help me find him?” I ask.
“Hmmm…” Cato uncrosses his arms and begins tapping fingers on a nearby workbench while staring into space. His taps alight on a holopad, which emits a series of beeps. The active drone in the room emits an answering tone as three mechanical arms extend from hatches in its sides, hanging down to give it the appearance of a squid. It rotates in place with a steady whir, air prickling my stubble from the vents in its sides.
“Is that going to be all right?” I ask.
Cato turns and steps past it. “Oh, don’t mind it – a prototype a friend of mine wanted an opinion on. So: you need me to find this fellow, all on the down-low, I take it?” He stops at an elaborate console and activates it, fingers flying over the touchpad keyboard. “You do realize he’d have a new identity to match the face? But no harm in looking, right?”
“I’ll owe you for this.”
“Pish. Hacking DSS is a pleasure. Those fellows are so straightforward and predictable – they really should implement some chaos theory into their security. And I may have some friends over there, if you get my meaning. Let’s see…” It’s hard to follow what he’s doing, though the pop-ups flashing DSS logos and server names across four holoscreens give me some idea.
“They won’t find out about this?”
“
About what?” he says, grinning. “Well, I don’t know for sure, but they’ll probably no’ find out. If there’s one thing I’m very, very good at, it’s covering my online tracks. Well, there was that one time with their awards party – no senses of humor over there at all, I thought they’d appreciate cats prancing about in wee hard suits. I had a nip or two of old glass eye before –”
I clear my throat.
“Well, you’ll sing me a fine eulogy if they do. There, I’m in. Now to run a search using his name and other keywords from the dossier and…” He gives a forceful tap to the touchpad and steps back, raising a hand to stroke his auburn goatee.
“How long?” I ask.
“Not very.”
The holoscreens he’s using all flicker at the same moment before search results start populating one of the screens. Cato leans forward and enters more commands on the keyboard. “That was odd. No security logs, no unauthorized traffic or attacks on the firewall.”
“What is it?”
“Hmm? I don’t know. Probably nothing. So,” he points to the screen with the search results, “no hits in the last three months. No ID registers, no comm records, no non-recurring financial transactions, and surveillance captures are out with the new face. Too bad you don’t have a picture of him – the new him, that is.”
“When and where was his ID last registered?”
“The last location registered by his ID was… let’s see…”
“Warning: alert level raised,” says the drone in a metallic baritone.
“Master Tech?” I say, one hand on my holstered pistol, eyes on the drone.
“No worries,” he says, not looking over, “the safety protocols are engaged. Here we are, ninety-seven days ago on the Delmarva Peninsula. The location matches his address on file. Not public domain – the property’s registered under a shell company – but DSS is careful about keeping tabs on its people. Man must love his privacy, it’s pretty remote out there.”
I keep one eye on the drone. "Shouldn't his ID going dark have registered a red flag?"
"Oh, without a doubt, but whether they act on it? Purely up to them. You know how they're always going on about lacking resources to follow up on unregistered persons, a convenient excuse for allowing their people to roam free.”
“Doesn’t HHS maintain their own ID registry?”
“Aye, but getting into their servers? No small potatoes. Are you sure this Conry fellow even has a valid ID? He’d likely have a fake registered under the identity he’s using.”
“He calls himself Krayge. That’s all I’ve got.”
The lights flicker and dim as the holoscreens go dark. All of them. Not deactivated, though, nor displaying static or error screens, but rectangles of pure black.
“What the devil?” says Cato, clearly bewildered.
“Warning: unauthorized intrusion,” says the drone. It stops spinning in place and orients its primary sensory lens on us. Electricity sparks from the tips of its hanging tentacles. Not good.
I pull my pistol. “Master tech, shut that thing down.”
“Hmm? Oh, right.” He steps over to the holopad he activated before and begins jabbing at it. “Ah. I must have disengaged the safeties.”
I get beside him. “What does it do?”
“It’s weaponized.” He keeps manipulating the holopad, the frown on his face getting more pronounced with every glance I spare him. “Supposed to zap intruders at close range, never see it coming. Because of the stealth tech.”
“It’s got stealth?”
All the holoscreens in the room suddenly light up with streaming video of us, me with my pistol in a two-handed grip staring at the camera and Cato looking down at the holopad with a look of frustration. The drone’s sensory feed.
“Cato?” I say, nudging him with my shoulder.
I see him look up on all the holoscreens around the room. “What… That’s strange.”
“Unauthorized intruders will be prosecuted,” says the drone. “For your own safety, please leave the area immediately.” More electricity sparks from its tentacles.
Cato puts a restraining hand on my arm and tosses the holopad away. “No, don’t shoot it. Top drawer,” he says, pointing at the workstation beside me. “Not that one. That one. Aye, the one that looks like a gun. That’s an EMP waveform modulator I’ve been tinkering with, give it here.” He takes it from me. “Ah, perfect.”
The drone moves laterally to hover over a squat pedestal in the room’s center with cables plugged into it. Its tentacles come to life, brushing over the pedestal’s surface. A shower of sparks shoots out as all the holoscreens in the room go dark.
“Master tech!”
Cato fires the pulse gun and the air distorts in a cone away from it. The lights blink out throughout the vault as the drone drops to the deck with a crash, sparking and going still. Then the lights reactivate as emergency power kicks in, though a bank of holoscreens on the far wall stays dark, the segment of aurora borealis there taken out by the EMP.
“Oh, my friend is going to be furious,” says Cato. He hands me the EMP gun.
I holster my pistol and put the EMP gun back in its drawer. “This happen often?”
He ignores the question, going to his elaborate console and checking behind it.
I approach the drone and nudge it with a boot. Fried, all right.
“Some clever bastard did me one better,” says Cato. “How, I just don’t know. It should no’ be possible, there’s triple redundancy on the firewall, and the tunnel encryption would take days to crack without a super.”
I take it in, note that none of the workstations have any power. “How bad is it?”
He gets to his feet and heaves a sigh. “Bad bad. I’ve got backups, no worries there, but I’ll be riding a portable until this mess gets sorted. Damn well hit me right in the shorts, whoever it was.” He walks over and peers down at the drone. “Took remote control and had it spike the power.” He shrugs. “Well, we got his address. You want me to tag along on the house call?”
“I hear the peninsula is full of snakes.”
“Snakes? Pish! But I see your point. While you’re off gallivanting, I’ll poke around, see if I can finagle DOD for the classified portions of Conry’s service.”
“Thanks. I’ll be in touch later today.” I turn to go.
“Was I supposed to call you about something?”
What? I turn back. Ah… “About our talk last week?”
“Our talk? Oh, of course, of course.” He raises an eyebrow. “Remind me again?”
“The new IDs?”
“Right,” he says. “I was supposed to call you, wasn’t I? Sorry about that, really I am.”
“It’s alright. Do you have anything?”
“You received the promotional materials I sent over, correct?”
“I reviewed them – there wasn’t much there.”
“There wasn’t?” He grabs a holopad from a drawer and activates it, handing it over. It’s got the same promotional materials he sent me, pictures and basic tech specs on the new IDs. “So, the new V5 chip – the FTM, or Field Tracking Module, version five. Designed for cranial implant only, with better shielding, a stronger MFC transmitter, and more robust security against hacking. As with previous models, it retains the ability to, ah, incentivize the recipient via the brain’s pain centers. Damn well hurts, too, I can tell you.”
“What about nanobots?” I ask.
“You know about that, then?”
“Am I not supposed to know?”
“The devil if I know! No one’s told me a thing about them, had to figure out the wee beasties were there on my own.”
I stare at him, speechless, before managing to get out, “What?”
“Have I done something wrong?”
“Let me see if I understand this,” I say. “We’ve been given new IDs that use nanotech – a technology untested for fieldwork – and no one thought to tell us? The promotional materials don’t even mention them.�
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“That does sound about right.”
“How is this not known?”
“You have to understand, Malcolm, we don’t design the IDs, we just disseminate them according to policy. We received the new V5s with instructions to deploy for field work right off. There was no mention of nanotech anywhere.”
“Alright.” I sigh and run a hand through my stubble. “Tell me what they do.”
“Think of them as miniaturized drones. Wee service drones, buzzing about through the bloodstream to fix any problems –”
“I know what a nanobot is.”
“Right. So, I installed a V5 in Jenkins, and that’s when I discovered them. Jenkins was not pleased, by the way, but he shouldn’t cry, it was his turn after all. Anyway, when he started in about headaches, brain scans turned up something, not that I could figure out what at first, so I thought, why no’ take a look at his blood?”
“So, what do they do?”
He shrugs. “I don’t even know how they got there.”
“You have some theories?”
“I have given it some thought. Best case, the nanotech aids an interface device in monitoring medical conditions. Like wee helpers, see? And, I should add, provide treatment like the way they’re used on certain illnesses. Very exciting, the possibilities.”
I place a hand on his arm, make sure he’s paying attention. “And the worst case?”
“Uhm, bad, possibly? Interfering somehow with neural functioning would be my bet. Maybe affect motor control functionality to cause paralysis? That’d be handy. It all depends on the programming to control them, I imagine – the beasties are quite adaptable.”
I lower my arm and turn away. Doctor Hancock was right – the new interface devices use nanotechnology with unknown capabilities. I can understand keeping it from the public, but concealing it from front-line operatives like me? It does seem to suggest worst-case scenarios.
“All speculation!” says Cato. “All speculation, you understand.”