This will take much longer, Geoffrey revealed.
Her face contorted, looking down at her gauntlet. Why?
Ray changed the security encryption. It will take me at least ten minutes to break it.
We don’t have that time. She rested the palm of her gauntlet on the door’s smooth surface. Let’s get rid of this door, shall we?
The nanite swarm turned the door into gray goo, forcing it to pool on the floor below. It was faster than hacking but left signs that an RW like her changed it, just like her first day in LA. She had to take the chance. Time wasn’t something on her side. When she stepped through into Ray’s unit, the gray goo on the floor rose, took shape of the door that was there before, and rebuilt it. Geoffrey’s black cat holographic appearance appeared next to her, leaping up onto the coat rack, standing watch.
In and out.
She ran from cabinet to cabinet carefully pulling items out, then putting them back. It only made the anxiety tingling in her chest worse. Searching quickly was easy, doing that plus making it look like you were never there while on the clock? She wanted to scream in frustration and pull on her hair. It was too much. She underestimated how fast the task needed to be.
A minute was left, so she guessed. She ran for Ray’s computer, idling ahead of a window that wanted to let in the sunlight, but couldn’t thanks to the adjacent buildings, forming a wall of metal and windows across the sky. The computer powered on with a spray of nanites from her gauntlet, its password was a lot easier to hack than the front door.
Time was limited, so she had Geoffrey copy as much of its hard drive to her head as was possible, before quickly logging out and walking away as if it had never been on. She browsed briskly through the downloaded computer files now in her head, their contents appearing in her left eye, her right eye remained on the sights of Ray’s apartment, as she continued searching.
She grinned when document files appeared. They were rough drafts of articles that eventually ended up on DigiSamurai69’s blog. Ray and the hacker, she thought. They’re the same. This confirms it.
It may be wise to keep this information to ourselves to protect him.
Estrella found coding programs and various hacking apps in the next batch of downloaded files. Looks like he was a bit of a troublemaker before he hung up his coding jersey.
And might still be one. Geoffrey brought up a new screen—newly compiled phone and tablet pad apps. According to this, Ray programmed custom made hacking apps and installed them to his phone and pad for ease of use while away from his home.
You’re telling me that pendejo doesn’t need his computer to crack stuff?
That is correct Estrella.
Shit.
It might be best if we did not cross him. Should he plug his tablet into you, he may compromise my systems.
Estrella believed it too. Ray was dating Arianna, an employee of Yoshida. Who knows what corporate secrets she shared with her lover in private? Yoshida manufactured most high-end tech. Ray learning how to crack their codes gave him unlimited access to everything that made the Alliance function on the technology side.
As impressive as Ray’s abilities were, she had doubts that this was the reason the IWs tried to attack his place of dwelling. They backtracked when they realized nobody was home. And what a backtrack they made. Estrella looked around, and she saw very few signs the place was broken into. Upon finishing a quick optical scan of the unit, she learned the front door wasn’t forced open, and probably wasn’t hacked.
How the fuck did the IWs get in?
Perhaps the same way Nobuo escaped from the Kounias residence?
What? Cut a hole through the air and jump in?
It would explain things. If he had the power to create micro-singularities connecting two points of space together, then yes, that would be possible.
Wanna dumb it down for the witch?
If Nobuo was an S ranked weaponized telepath, then it is conceivable he made a portal to escape from us. Therefore, he might have used that same portal to enter this apartment unit.
And the SWAT armory. Estrella sighed when she put things together. And the New York airport … That asshole had the power to be in four places at once.
You might want to take a look at this, Estrella.
Geoffrey showed her a new screen containing contents downloaded from Ray’s computer. Emails, and lots of them. Ray’s most recent messages were confirmation messages from an autoresponder. He booked a flight from Los Angeles to New York, the itinerary on the flight listed his return flight, and it should have landed in Los Angeles. Only, it didn’t, not with JFK temporarily shut down.
Ray’s still in New York, she thought, her eyes still skimming through his hacked email account.
It is most likely he discovered something of importance, which required him to stay.
How do you figure?
The airport is now allowing some flights to land and depart. Yet, Ray did not get a new ticket for his return to Los Angeles.
You’re right. She scrolled through the messages. Ray was taking his time booking a different return flight home. And he’s not dead if he’s still posting as DigiSamurai69.
Further proof Ray was alive and not missing, was a recent message sent to the editor-in-chief of the Alliance Star. Attached were drafts to his report on the airport attack. There were other email messages Ray and the editor, Steven Jarred, sent. Most of it was Jarred rambling that he couldn’t call or send text messages to Ray’s number. Ray replied, claiming he was using a different phone with a local New York number. It makes it harder to track him if people don’t know he swapped phones. Ray was glad to do it too, as he felt like he was being watched. He came across something big, really big, something that could start the fourth world war. Ray just needed proof—
A phone rang. Its charming ringtone directed Estrella to it. It was the local Los Angeles phone Ray left behind intentionally. She wouldn’t be surprised if the IWs that attacked traced its signal to his place.
She held the transparent phone in her hand, and its screen displayed the caller ID of the person calling, Piper Taylor. Piper had left several unread text messages.
It made Estrella gasp. Piper is reaching out to him.
It also reminded her that Piper was probably seconds away from entering.
She hit the ignore button and looked at the phone longer. Piper and Ray know each other. She held the device tightly in the grasp of her NC gauntlet. Same deal with the computer, Geoffrey. Nanite hack this phone, download, and analyze everything on it.
This phone’s data is heavily encrypted. It will take some time to break.
Do it.
Processing please stand by—
The front door unlocked and slowly opened. Geoffrey’s holographic form standing watch vanished. Piper is here now, please take cover.
Estrella had that to do and more. Looking to the computer and phone in her grip, she realized Piper would get what she was seeking. Estrella couldn’t allow that. She dispatched a swarm of nanites to the computer and watched as they turned it to gray goo on the floor. A flick of her gauntlet hand sent orders to the swarm, making the goo retreat under the couch. The sudden discharge of all utility bots in her body halted the hack of Ray’s phone. She was thinking on her feet from that point.
Piper and the apartment’s landlord entered. Estrella darted into Ray’s bedroom, out of sight for the time being. She snickered at the white lingerie in the corner, probably belonging to Arianna during her last visit. Arianna had a killer body, despite wearing a bra size smaller than Estrella’s.
She pulled a nanotube from her opened arm. It swam in the gray goo that used to be her helmet and leather suit. A quick injection sent a replacement swarm into her body. She had Geoffrey perform a Scan Copy of Ray’s phone, before turning it into goo. The newly injected nanites carried the goo, formally Ray’s phone, into her arm, before it shut. She made plans to hack it later. Preventing the evidence from getting into Piper’s hands was all
that mattered.
Estrella needed an exit plan. Geoffrey, suggestions for escape?
We must make it back into the hallway. However, every unit on this floor is occupied with tenants.
I take it, repeating my trick isn’t going to work?
Disassembling the wall as a means to flee is not advisable. You risk being detected by tenants in the unit you will pass into.
Estrella had to find the wall that separated the unit from the hall.
The footsteps and chatter between Piper and the landlord grew closer to Estrella while she remained hidden in Ray’s bedroom. She ran an optical scan of the apartment. It flooded her vision with numbers and a three-dimensional floor plan layout of the interior and exterior of the building. Ray, as did all tenants, had a balcony. It’d make for the perfect escape, just slip out on it, then scale down to the streets, leaping to the balconies below. And if Piper and the landlord weren’t lounging around in the living room, then Estrella would have done that.
She found her best bet, Ray’s bedroom window.
Piper and the landlord drew closer. Estrella had to make her move now.
Silently, she power walked to the window, tiny hairs on the back of her neck wanted to rise and keep watch for what she couldn’t see behind. She placed her NC gauntleted palm against the window and ordered a swarm of nanites to deconstruct it bit-by-bit. Rippling circles flowed across the glass from where her palm touched it. The glass looked as if it had turned to a clear liquid, and the rippling waves were like a rock that got tossed into a pond. The window was melting.
By the time her nanites were done and returned to her, the glass turned goo beneath her heels. She crawled up and through the glassless window, while winds from the high altitude rustled her hair. Vertigo kicked in when she glanced down, her heart thumping. The streets looked like black lines with specks of dots moving across, gigantic shadows cast from the apartment and others close by darkened everything below. Delivery drones zipped back and forth, delivering meals and goods to those that ordered them in the high-rise neon jungle.
To her left was the line of balconies hanging off the exterior of the building. She positioned herself carefully while perched up on the windowsill, wondering if she was out of her mind. Then she leaped.
As she fell, she waved her blue glowing gauntlet hand, ordering a spray of nanites to fly back into Ray’s bedroom and find the gray goo on the floor, restoring the window to its original state. She continued falling for five seconds holding her hand forward, waiting for the return of her swarm back into the gauntlet and then to re-inject inside her after the job was done.
She was still falling, her black hair rippling like she was caught in a wind tunnel. Balcony after balcony lifted out of her vision. The surface got closer, real fast. Estrella was out of arm’s reach to grab a balcony. Maybe she really was crazy.
At fifteen seconds into her drop, her synthetic arm grasped the corner of one balcony, breaking her tumble down the urban well. She released her grip and fell, catching the edge of the next balcony, and then she did it again. And again, and again. Her cyborg body and speed felt no stress on the way down to the street and her parked motorcycle.
Estrella marched away from the apartment after coming to a landing. A triumphant smile brightened her face as she made her approach to her idle bike. Her synthetic arm opened once again while she browsed through the saved patterns on her screens. She selected the red helmet and red leather suit, and Ray’s phone.
The gray goo pooled inside her arm spilled out, most of it falling to her feet. It covered them, slowly spreading up her legs, covering her skirt, midriff, halter top, then head. It took the shape of her helmet and biker suit and solidified from the gray goo. The last of the goo spilled into her hands and became Ray’s phone. She placed it in her pocket and got on the bike, powering it on.
Leaving already? Geoffrey asked.
She drove away from the apartment with her hair flapping in the winds. I think I got exactly what Piper wanted to get. She patted her suit’s pocket, feeling the solid object in it. Access to Ray’s phone, email, and network. Now we need to find out why she needed to get a hold of him so badly after the attacks.
Twenty-Eight
Ray
Back in the hotel, out of the cold, with feet up on the desk. Ray sat back, holding his pad fingering it rapidly, making the keystrokes needed to instruct Jax’s botnet to hack the network grid in question. What’s in the network? The morgue.
His pad relayed live surveillance camera footage from the morgue’s front parking lot. There were two black cars parked that caught his attention. He enhanced the view of the plates with an imaging scan. Two new windows formed and ran a database check. He wasn’t surprised to learn the plates were registered with the AIT. Alliance government agents were in the morgue, searching for clues on the IW bodies pulled from the airport attack. At least he assumed that was the case, since it was the reason he was there hacking the cameras.
Oh yeah, they’re here for that all right.
After six camera hops, Ray found the one camera overlooking the cold storage area, where all the dead were kept. IWs included. He recognized the neutral faces of Miguel and John from the AIT. They ordered one lab tech to the computer console, where he typed in some codes, and placed his hand on a biometric scanner.
A beep or two sounded, and then a section of the wall pulled open like a storage drawer. When the mist was waved away, the three stood looking down at a naked body trapped within a stasis tube. The body’s lips were blue and above that, if you looked closely, you could see a gory hole through his head, two fingers wide.
Miguel gestured to the lingering morgue workers in the background. “Do they need to be here?”
“Not really,” said the lab tech to him.
“Then get them out of here.”
The tech moved forward, instructing his team to leave. They all left without asking questions, vanishing from the view of the camera. Ray sat up straight, pulling his pad closer to his face.
John stopped at the recently released body while the lone lab tech pulled more bodies out from their stasis slots in the walls.
“I’ve never seen IWs like this,” he pointed at the carcass. Ray zoomed in. He saw cyberware joints on the arm of the body. “IWs don’t get cyberware like this. IW genes and their abilities don’t work well with cyberware tech. Only RWs get them, and that’s because they were born human.”
A secondary window popped up, obscuring Ray’s view showing the footage from the parking lot camera. He’d minimize and ignore it if it wasn’t for the red letters flashing, stating new movement had been detected. A new car showed up and parked in the lot outside the morgue, four men exited wearing large coats. Large enough to hold weapons inside. He ordered window one to remain on the agents examining the bodies. Window two was to follow the four newly arrived men.
He focused eyes and ears on window one.
“Have you identified them?”
“No, their facial scans don’t show up anywhere. These IWs never stepped foot into the Alliance until today.”
“So, they are from overseas.”
Window two’s view switched to the main entrance of the morgue. A member of the staff went to speak with the four men and ate a psychokinesis stun to the face. Their body crashed to the floor, rolling and convulsing. It caught the attention of three AIT agents who were standing watch. The agents drew their pistols. Four pairs of white glowing hands rose, and a psychokinesis stun locked the agents down. The four glowing hands reached for pistols with silencers attached. Six or seven flashes of muzzle fire sent curving bullets ripping holes through the AIT agents. A splash of red and exiting gore made the walls sticky and gross.
Nobody in window one heard how the dead met their ends. Ray had no way to warn them that theirs was coming.
“You have no idea.” It was Miguel’s voice. Or was it John? Panic made Ray forget how they sounded.
The four men continued moving through the morgue
on window two. On window one, Ray saw the lab tech with gloved hands pull the flesh back on the arm of the second body. A gunshot had torn right through it, but not the cyberware under it. Ray zoomed in.
“These parts?” The tech said pointing. “Zhang Industries made them. This is triple-A Federation tech, only used by their military. Last time I checked, recruiting IWs to any military was banned internationally.”
With crossed arms, John asked. “So, you’re saying the Federation is weaponizing their IWs with cyberware?”
“Not just any cyberware, high-end shit,” said the tech. “I think these implants were enhancing their powers, bringing them to an S rank, maybe beyond.”
Miguel mumbled. “No fucking way. What would be beyond S rank?”
“I don’t know.” The tech shook his head as he moved about, showing the two agents the cyberware the recovered IW bodies had. “I saw pictures of the attack at JFK. Hard to imagine regular IWs did that. And it’s troublesome to imagine that a group of terrorists got their hands on these parts. Someone figured out a way to put cyberware in IWs, make it work without problems, and then trained them.”
“How did you see that?” Miguel’s voice was firm and to the point, directed at the lab tech.
“Eh? See what?”
“Footage from the airport attack.”
The tech shrugged. “Well—”
“Never mind, you shouldn’t know that. Fuck, nobody should.”
“The video of the attack was leaked to me since I was working on these bodies.”
On window two, the four men were drawing closer with their silenced weapons in hand. Men … they were IWs, probably friends of the dead ones in window one. Ray rubbed his palms together. The reality that he might be forced to watch more lives end had hit. He stood as the only person to save them.
His heart was pumping. Think, man, think!
Ray still had access to the network. He could work with that, hack a computer, send a message, and hope they’d believe it. He went searching for network nodes linking to the computer console the tech used.
Cyber Witch Page 22