Neon Cortex (Neon Helix Universe Book 2)

by Nik Whittaker

  "Fuck!!!" The pain shot through his mind.

  Bella turned and walked over to him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

  "Jesus, are you sure this is safe?

  Salem didn't answer, as his eyes began to roll backwards in his head.

  He filtered the images and messages coming through, trying to find a needle in the digital haystack. Something caught his attention, the briefest second of an image. Concentrating on it, he focused his attention towards it to bring it back to his vision.

  "I can see her," he said, his eyes still tightly closed. "She's coming out of the club.

  "The deleted camera footage?" Bella said.

  "It could be, but for that to be still in the air it must have been transmitted out," Salem continued to focus, trying to keep the images in his minds eye.

  The images showed Kirsty stumbling out of the club. Two other girls, her friends, were standing with her. The angle of the camera was from a high vantage point, a building opposite the club. It zoomed in on the girls, a moment later, a group of augmented people surrounded them. Another large crowd passed by, their movements precise. Then they all moved, en mass, and the girls were lost in the crowd. Salem pulled a flask out of his jacket pocket and took a swig of the liquid inside, as his mind adjusted back to the present.

  "You ok?" Bella asked, eyeing him curiously.

  "Yeah, yeah, hurts like a bitch but I'm fine," he took another swig, "The camera, it wasn't from the club. It zoomed in on Kirsty. Someone was looking for her and was transmitting the images back. This wasn't random. Someone wanted her specifically," Salem straightened up and cracked his back.

  "So, where now?"

  "I think we need to have a chat with Marty. I'm thinking there's more to this than he's let on."

  *

  The office of Dramarti Silverstone was the penthouse floor of one of the skyscrapers in the Zeta City. Salem and Bella had made their way across the Boulevard and were standing outside the doors to the building.

  "Fucking hell," Salem leaned backwards, tracking the building from the bottom to the top with his eyes.

  "Silverstone Corp has done well for themselves in the last few years," Bella explained.

  "You don't say! Last time I spoke to Marty, he was still working out of a junk shop in the Mega, I guess he really does owe me...."

  "What exactly did you do for him? To fund your VR lifestyle completely for six years?" Bella had wanted to ask since she'd first been assigned the job.

  "Ah, that is between me and Mr Marty I'm afraid, love," he smiled and kicked the door open.

  A large reception area greeted them, a desk sat in its centre with a lone woman who looked up at them as they entered.

  "Can I help... " she began, before seeing Bella, "Ah Miss Rizinski, we weren't expecting you back so soon."

  "Hi Janice, my, colleague, here decided that seeing Mr Silverstone in person was vital to the investigation," Bella gave the receptionist a subtle glare. The receptionist nodded in understanding.

  "I see, head on up. I'll let Mr Silverstone know you are on your way."

  "Cheers," Salem smiled and walked past the desk, towards the lift on the far wall.

  The journey only took a minute, despite the two-hundred floors. When the doors opened, the office of Dramarti Silverstone was revealed. The room was dark, the large floor-to-ceiling windows were the only source of light, leaving most of the room in a shadowed darkness. The little light which came from the city below gave a coloured neon glow to everything it touched. A large wooden-topped desk was the centrepiece, behind which a man sat. His chair was a large leather armchair, with keypads embedded in its armrests.

  "I wondered how long it would be before you came to see me," the man looked up. A cigar in his mouth exuded smoke, which coiled through the air like a snake, dancing between the neon illumination.

  "Marty? That you? What the fuck happened?"

  The man smiled and rose from his desk. He was bulkier and larger than Salem remembered.

  "Power, all we worked to accomplish paid off, Salem."

  "No, it looks like you fell into the honey-pot as well."

  "I admit, I had to make some, adjustments," Dramarti waved a hand around the room.

  "Adjustments? What happened to helping the little guys? Taking down the fat-pig establishment and fighting for the fucking oppressed? That was what we worked towards Marty! Not becoming one of the oppressors! All the fucking effort we put in, the pain I went through getting the information! Just so you could make a throne for yourself like all the others!" Salem marched around the room as he shouted.

  Dramarti slammed his fist on the table, leaning forwards to stare at Salem.

  "You think this was easy, you think I didn't work hard towards helping the people like we always wanted? Where the fuck were you Salem? Hiding in your fucking VR! Letting me do all the hard work as always! You ran away from all this, from helping anyone but yourself! So don't judge me when you decided to lie down in your piss and shit while I put the hours in. Sure I took some advantage for myself, but I think I earned that right!"

  The two of them were now eye to eye, leaning over the table. Bella was still near the lift doors, watching them. Their breathing heavy, as the cigar smoke slowly snaked around them.

  "Fine!" Salem finally said, moving back. "You take what you want out of the deal, I can't complain. But you're the one who pulled me out, you're why I'm here. I just want to go back into the VR, so fuck you very much and I'll be on my way," Salem headed for the door.

  "Wait," Dramarti said, his voice vulnerable.

  Salem stopped near the lift door, he made eye contact with Bella.

  "I need your help Salem, please. For Kirsty's sake if not for me."

  Salem hesitated, staring at Bella. He sighed and hung his head.

  "Damnit," he whispered, "for Kirsty."

  He turned back round and walked to the table. Pulling one of the chairs round and throwing himself into it.

  "Tell me what this is all about, let's find her."

  Chapter 4

  Salem and Bella sat at the noodle bar on the Boulevard. Salem was drinking his third bottle of Asian beer, whilst Bella ate a carton of noodles with chopsticks.

  "So," she said between mouthfuls, "what exactly did you and Dramatri do back in the day?"

  In the office, Salem and Dramarti had narrowed down a list of suspects that could have potentially kidnapped Kirsty, but had kept the reasons vague. Salem finished his beer and grabbed the next.

  "Hah, you don't know how Marty got his credits?" Salem smiled.

  "Nope, I just work for the guy."

  "Well, as you know, I have a rather unique, gift. Which I exploited back in the day, blackmailing anyone I could get any information on. The odd cheating spouse here, a dodgy deal there, you know, the pond-level scum." Salem took another drink. "One of which was Mr Dramarti Silverstone, he was selling business secrets from his employers to a rival company. Nothing major, just financial leads. Anyway, once I had demanded my blackmail money, he got talking to me. Asking how I did what I did and the like. I've never seen someone's eyes light up with such greed, like a gambler seeing his next game. He suggested taking the scale up a few notches, to the High-Rise scum, and to use the money to help the poor sods still scraping to make a living in the Slums."

  "Aw, I wouldn't have taken you for the caring type," Bella said, with a mocking smile on her face.

  Salem flashed a frown of anger.

  "Fuck you, you don't know jack about me and where I came from. For your information, it was the poor sods in the slums who took me in when I was... " He trailed off and took another swig from his beer. "Anyway, we spent months gathering information about as many high level corp suits as we could. He had the contacts to get us into areas where I could use my gift to get any information we needed. Once we had enough, we set up the blackmail system. The work had taken a toll on me though, my brain was burnt out. Believe it or not, the cerebral cortex isn't designed for the work
I was using it for. I could hardly think straight."

  "So you went into the VR to get away from it," Bella finished.

  "Exactly, it was only meant to be temporary, but the freedom was liberating. I'd given Marty enough information to get the money rolling in, and I took my retirement plan. Until today."

  Bella had finished her food and was drinking her beer. Charlie, the Noodle bar owner, passed by to clear the empty cartons.

  "Thanks Charlie," she sang, as he passed.

  "No worries Bella," he smiled.

  "How's work?" Salem asked, keeping the conversation going.

  "Damn, is that Salem? Good to see you man!" He shook Salems' hand, "works been doing all right. Shame those Sliders are hitting more local businesses, keeping the customers away." Charlie replied, shrugging his shoulders.

  "On the rise?" Salem asked.

  "Yep, really ramped up in the last few weeks, seems like their numbers are increasing every day," he shook his head as he headed back to the stand.

  "Stay safe Charlie," Bella said, waving.

  "You too," he waved back.

  "So, where do we start?" She turned back to Salem.

  He was glancing through the list of names on the paper he had in front of him.

  "Well, it's difficult to..." Salem trailed off, his eyes going blank.

  "Salem?" Bella asked, waving a hand in front of his face.

  He was completely still, even his breathing had seemed to stop for a moment. Deep inside his mind, he could feel a tugging of some sort, as though he was picking up a signal.

  "SALEM," Bella slapped him around the face. The impact brought him back to reality.

  "FUCK!" He shouted, rubbing the pain on his cheek.

  "Where the hell did you just go?"

  "I'm not sure," Salem puzzled as he held the cold beer to his throbbing cheek. "Anyway, can you search those names up from the list?"

  "What am I looking for?" Bella asked, as she brought up a search engine on her PDA.

  "Current situation, I figure that anyone who is still suffering from our blackmail would still have a grudge. Most scumbags will manage to regain their footholds regardless of what we cost them. But if anyone didn't manage it, they would be my first guess."

  Bella tapped the air around the PDA, accessing the files and searching the names.

  Salem scanned the street around them as she searched. The street was pretty much the same as it had been before he went into his VR self-exile, only now there were more lights, more advertisements and more people.

  "Here," Bella caught his attention back.

  Glancing back over, he could see the name she had brought up, Samuel Underwood.

  "He's the only one I can see who isn't still doing well for himself.

  "Samuel Underwood? Tell me where he worked before?"

  "He was a senior technician in electronics at CyBio for a few years."

  "That's the one! He was selling company tech to fuel his drug habit. The people he bought from were known for child labour and human trafficking." Salem stood up and finished his beer.

  "He's living in the BitSlums," Bella said, finishing her beer in one long gulp, while Salem watched with admiration.

  "Then it's time to head to the slums," Salem replied, as they walked away from the noodle bar.

  Chapter 5

  They made their way to the BitSlums in an AutoCab.

  "So what are we expecting here?" Bella asked, pulling out a small side arm.

  "Where the hell you been keeping that?" Salem jerked sideways at the sight of the pistol.

  "A girls' got to have protection," Bella winked at him.

  "Well, just keep it hidden, the last thing we need is some trigger-happy jerkoff seeing that and getting itchy fingers." Salem pushed the gun aside.

  "Fine," Bella said, returning the pistol to its holster on her leg, her coat covering it from view.

  "Anyway, I don't know what we're going to find here. I find it hard to believe that Samual Underwood is the person who took Kirsty directly. More likely, is that he had someone do it for him."

  They got out of the car and stepped into the cooler night air of the BitSlums. The area was distinctly lower tech, its residents unable to afford the modern technologies. The lack of signals made the area easier on Salems' mind.

  Taking a few steps down the street, they stood outside of a building, graffiti covered its facade.

  "This the place?" Salem asked, as Bella checked her PDA.

  "Yep, this is the last recorded address for Mr Underwood," she confirmed.

  "Ok, he definitely didn't rise from the pile after we broke him then," Salem said, pushing the door open.

  Inside, the smell of various drugs, alcohol and sweat hit them like a brick wall.

  "Jesus!" Bella gasped, covering her face with her sleeve.

  Salem didn't seemed phased by it, stepping over the threshold. The inner walls were all peeling paint, and the hardwood floor was scratched more than it wasn't. He turned and checked on Bella, who had moved a bit of fabric across her mouth and nose, nodding as she stepped in.

  They checked the rooms as they walked through, a woman lay unconscious on a bed, a wire running from her arm into a small metallic box. Beside her, another man was fiddling with his own wire which attached to the box, he was trying to connect it to a socket embedded in his arm. Blood seeped from around the socket, it was a fresh implant.

  "What the hell... " Bella stared at the scene before them.

  "Never seen self-augmentation before?" Salem asked, "These poor sods can't afford to have the implants done professionally. They do it to themselves with basic tools, the results are never pretty. That box there is a Drug-Synthesiser, or DRS machine, it creates the illusion of any drug within the users mind. Originally, it was for rehabilitation use, y'know to ween people off the influence, but it ended up being too real. The machine still creates as much addiction and inflicts as much damage to the body was the real thing, the mind can't distinguish it."

  "Reminds me of how I found you," Bella replied.

  Salem ignored the comment and moved on to check the rest of the house.

  At the far end of the building, they found a kitchen. A man sat at the table, staring at a bowl in front of him. It was empty and clean, but the man looked as though he was about to eat.

  "Mr Underwood?" Bella walked up to him, despite his appearance being more dishevelled and several pounds lighter than his photo on file, she was sure it was him.

  At the sound of his name, he jumped to his feet, his chair flying behind him.

  "No! Get away from me!" He scurried backwards to the corner of the room, his hands up in defence. Salem and Bella exchanged looks.

  "We just want to ask you some questions," Bella stepped towards him.

  "No! I told you everything already! Just leave me alone! I won't tell anyone about it I swear!" He slid to the ground, hugging his knees.

  Salem crouched down in front of Samuel, he held his face, forcing him to look directly into Salems' eyes.

  "Sam! Snap out of it! Do you remember me?"

  Slowly, the focus returned to Sam's eyes as he looked at Salem.

  "Salem?"

  "That's right Sam, what the hell happened to you?"

  As the memories seemed to return to Sam's mind, a flash of anger struck him.

  "You bastard!" Samuel flung a fist out, it connected with Salems' jaw, forcing a splatter of blood to erupt from his bottom lip. Bella moved in, but Salem shooed her away with a wave.

  "It's ok, I deserved that," Salem said, "but that one shot is all you get!" He said to Sam.

  "You fucked my entire life over!" Sam shouted, standing up now.

  "I know, I know, that's on me, but you can't blame me for the fact you were skimming from your employers to feed your habits. They'd have caught you, eventually!"

  Sam was still breathing heavily, but lowered his fists.

  "Why are you even here? I've got enough shit to be dealing with."

 
"We're looking for Kirsty Silverstone, you know anything about that?" Salem pulled the chair back upright and sat on it.

  "Silverstone? Your Blackmail Buddie?"

  "His daughter yes, she's been kidnapped."

  "Oh I see, and you thought I was the one who took her? For revenge?" Sam laughed.

  "The thought had crossed my mind yes, though looking at you now, I'm not convinced."

  Sam grabbed a bottle of a white liquid from a cupboard, drinking deep from it.

  "Revenge definitely crossed my mind. But I never went through with it, I couldn't. The more I thought about it, the more I knew I was a fuck-up. If anything, I tried to turn my life around, but it was so hard." He sat on another chair and put his head in his hands.

  Bella walked over to him, placing a hand on his shoulder, she glanced at Salem. He nodded back, she would play the good cop.

  "It's okay, we all make mistakes and have hurdles to jump. We need time to recover. What was it you were so scared of earlier?"

  Sam looked up suddenly, the thoughts returning to his mind.

  "Fuck! You shouldn't be here! They might come back soon, they.... they have Kirsty!"

  Salem jumped to his feet.

  "What the fuck do you mean they have her? You said you had nothing to do with it!"

  "I... I don't! But I know they have been taking people off the street, gathering people. If she's gone missing, my bet is they have her!"

  "Who? Who has her?" Bella asked.

  "The Sliders, they've been recruiting for their new program.... they are the ones who'll be coming here. I know too much about what they are doing and, I can't be talking to you."

  A scream echoed through the house, ending as abruptly as it started.

  "Oh shit!" Sam whimpered, "they're here!"

  Chapter 6

  The sound of wood splintering preceded the appearance of the three Sliders, as the door exploded inwards. Each of the Sliders had unique augmentations. Bella and Salem jumped to confront them, whilst Sam frantically searched for an escape or, failing that, a hiding place.

  "Who are you?" The first Slider demanded, the left side of his face a dull metallic silver, with a synthetic eyeball.