Reboots: Diabolical Streak

by Mercedes Lackey;Cody Martin

  “Why did you pick Nightshade Ltd. to plunder?” Jim asked Harry.

  The playboy shrugged. “Same reason I picked all of the others: It was small, isolated from the rest of the company, not really involved in most of our day-to-day activities. I figured that no one would notice if some money went missing; just shuffle it all around to make it disappear. Hell, if the banks can do it, I could, too.” He frowned. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because if I were an auditor, I’d be pulling in the CFO and everyone in the chain down for interviews right now,” Jim said with authority. “I could tell what was you—you’re crude and unsophisticated, and you left fingerprints all over what you stole. It’s the five or six other people in there that I’d be worrying about. For a little company it’s drawing outside resources all out of proportion to its size, and they aren’t coming from the main firm, either. Then those resources disappear. I found not two sets of books, but four. There’s property on one of those sets of books that doesn’t appear on the public books, or any of the other two sets. That property is eating a lot of utilities, and I mean a lot, the kind of power-draw that used to signal someone was running a drug greenhouse. That ringing a bell?”

  Humph felt his jaw dropping. He had taken Skinny Jim’s word for it when the Zombie had claimed he’d been a bookkeeper for the mob in life…he’d had no idea that the Reboot had been that kind of bookkeeper. This was Fed-level forensic accounting! “That sounds like a lead to me. Right now we don’t have any other moves to play; we don’t have enough to go public and expect to live, and getting off-planet isn’t exactly the safest bet either. Whoever is doing this has reach.”

  Lori sat up from the bed, alert. “What’re you thinking of doing, Humph?”

  “I’m tired of being on the defensive, always running from whoever these bastards are. I think it’s time to take the fight to them, to get proactive.” He stood up, replacing his cigar and chewing on it as he talked. “I say we raid the damned place that Jim found, see what we can see.”

  ***

  There wasn’t a lot of privacy in the bunker, but Skinny Jim and Fred had either gotten a lot more sensitive to Humph’s body language or they’d figured out something was going on between Humph and the Lorelei some other way. In either case, they both pulled Harry into an intense interrogation about Nightshade Ltd. around the kitchen table, giving Humph a chance to get down into the end of one of the storage arms on the excuse of looking for some firepower.

  “No need to sneak around, Lori. I know you’re there.” He turned around to find her standing at the entrance of the storage arm, hand against the frame. Even in a generic shirt and trousers, she still looked enticing.

  “You’re not going to let me come with you, are you?” she said, although the way she said it, it was more like a statement than a question.

  “You’re right, I’m not.” Humph crossed his arms in front of his chest, readying himself; he knew that this wasn’t going to be an easy conversation. “You’ve been a trooper so far, Lori; you’ve saved my hide, and that’s something I don’t take lightly. So I’m going to save yours; you need to get clear of this while you still can. We’re going to be causing a lot more trouble, and that means we’ll have more trouble heading our way, likely. That ought to give you a better shot of getting safe, while they focus on us.”

  “What if I don’t want to get safe?” she countered. “I know Loreleis don’t have the best reputation in the world, Boggart, but we’re not all bad. I never killed anyone I didn’t have to. If we get out of this, I could be a lot of help to you—”

  “You already said the key word, darlin’; ‘if’ we get out of this. We’re all way out of our league on this thing; getting by on dumb luck—especially in Harry’s case—and dirty tricks are the only reasons we’ve all stayed in one piece so far. I don’t imagine that our lucky streak is going to last much longer, especially since we’re probably about to poke the tiger with a stick.”

  She moved closer. “So? Shouldn’t you use everything and everyone you’ve got? I just found you, Boggart. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t let many people get close to me, much less this close.”

  The Boggart could already see the tendrils of her magic seeking him out, trying to caress him. “People who get that close to me don’t have the best track record, Lori. I’ve left enough bodies in my wake; I really don’t need another person I’m close to added to that number.”

  “It’s not just your decision, Boggart. It’s mine, too.” She had him penned in the end of the tunnel now. It was obvious that she wasn’t going to just sit back and take what he planned. Not without an argument…maybe a fight.

  “Damned if it is your decision!” He angrily took a step forward, but Lori held her ground. “I’m not going to let you throw your life away trying to help us.”

  “Let? Let? I was making my own decisions thousands of years ago, Boggart! What makes you think I’m going to sit still and let you treat me like you’re a caveman with his hand wrapped in my hair?” She blocked his way with her hands on her hips. “Admit it, Boggart! You’re just afraid—afraid of me. Afraid that if you admit you have feelings for me, every bit of your control over things is going to go flying out the window!”

  “All right! I am afraid of that! I do care about you, you silly little girl. A helluva lot.” He was fuming, and had to take a breath to calm himself. “I’m afraid with you around when this gets worse than it already is, I won’t be thinking clearly. I’ll be too worried about you, wondering if you’re safe. And I need every bit of attention for what’s to come; if I don’t have it, we’re all dead even surer than we probably already are.” He took a final step forward, leaving less than a foot between them as he took her by the arms. “If I know you’re safe, away from this, maybe, just maybe we’ll get out of it. Probably not, but it’s still a shot.” Being this close to her was maddening; her magic was mingling with his, and he could feel her breath against his neck and chest as he looked into her eyes.

  She looked up into his face, and for once, he didn’t see a single trace of guile about her. “This isn’t the geas, Boggie. I know what it feels like to be manipulated by magic. You’re the first man in a thousand years to get to me. I don’t want to lose that.”

  “Then do this one thing for me, Lori. Get out of here, run, hide and be safe. I won’t be much good to you if I’m dead.”

  “And how do I find you again?” she asked, her eyes filling with tears.

  She wanted comfort and that was the one thing he couldn’t give her. He never made promises, even implied promises, that he couldn’t keep. “We’ll just have to see, kiddo.” He kissed her; softly at first, then more urgently. And, of course, the kiss was interrupted by a polite cough from the other part of the bunker.

  “Boss, if we’re going to make a run, we need to decide if it’s now or later. And if it’s now, we need to plan.” Fred’s voice echoed from far enough away that it was obvious he wasn’t within eyeshot of them…

  …now. No telling if he’d gotten a full view of the clinch. I don’t know whether to kick the tar out of that fleabag or buy him a case of scotch for interrupting. Humph and Lori separated; she was still wiping tears from her eyes and trying to smile.

  “If I could shoot…or turn invisible…or pick locks…” she said, her voice thick with tears.

  “I’d still want you to run, to find someplace safe. This is just how it has to be, Lori.” He caressed her cheek, then thought better of it and let his hand fall away with some reluctance. “Get together the cash we have left over on the cards. Jim ought to be able to arrange something for you while Fred and I are on this little mission.” He chuckled lightly, looking down at his feet. “I imagine that you can take care of yourself pretty well, if anything comes up. You’re a survivor.”

  Before he could say anything else that he might regret, he pushed her gently aside and called out to Fred. “Now. They don’t know we know about Nightshade. And they don’t know you two hooked up with us. We hi
t them while we still have some pretense at surprise.” It took every bit of his resolve but he edged past Lori and back to the main module.

  ***

  The first thing they needed was a vehicle. Amazingly, there were half a dozen in the ship graveyard that only needed a couple of parts to get running. Some quick cannibalization by Fred and they had another beater-transport, virtually invisible. Some clever get-arounds by Jim and they even renewed one of the tags, so they wouldn’t even be stopped, registering the thing to the graveyard. It would be a nice little present to their involuntary hosts if they all survived this.

  Now it was the Boggart and Fred in the transport, and a single burner phone. Lori, Harry and Jim were hunkered down in the bunker with only the data-node hack running. The Boggart didn’t know what their plans were if everything went to hell, and he didn’t want to know. Makes for less that someone can beat out of us later. He just hoped that Lori was gone by the time he got back; he didn’t want to have to go through another emotional goodbye. Twice in one century was over his limit already.

  Nightshade Ltd. was housed in a neat, antiseptically clean research park, full of little companies just like it, all in identical white buildings finished with a shiny ceramcoat—which alone would tell the knowledgeable that what was going on here was something biochem or tech in nature. If something went terribly wrong, the building could be tented, fumed, and hosed down. With or without victims still inside.

  And that was…interesting. Because this was supposed to be a cosmetics researcher. So…why put it in a BioHazard 4-rated park?

  “What do you think we’re going to find in there, boss?” Fred had been uncharacteristically fidgety on their ride over. He knew what the stakes were, and how low their chances of success were. It said a lot about him that he decided to come along despite that. Humph just hoped that his friend’s loyalty wouldn’t be the death of him.

  “Hopefully something that’ll give us an out, something to get free of this mess. If we can’t get our hands on that, we’re sunk.”

  Their plan was simple; that way, fewer things could go wrong with it. The downside was that if anything went wrong they were probably going to end up dead—or worse. They were going to sneak in as a delivery crew; coveralls, some dollies with boxes loaded with really heavy parts and things that looked like expensive machines borrowed from the yard, and the transport completed the picture. Bullshit their way in the front door, and move as fast and stealthily as they could until they found some dirt. They were sitting in the transport outside of Nightshade Ltd.; Humph took a moment to look over Fred. “Are you ready for this, partner?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine.” He looked anything but fine; Humph tossed his flask into Fred’s lap, grinning as he put on one of his disguise faces. This one was of a dockside bartender he had met centuries ago, back on Earth; boxed-in ears, a flat nose, and darkened eyes completed the picture: just another beaten-down laborer.

  “Never leave home without it,” he said, pointing to the flask. “Take a nip, and then we’re on.” Fred did so, downing quite a bit more than a nip of the whisky before handing the flask back to Humph. With that, both of them exited the transport and started unloading the boxes. They affected their best “worn out and ready for happy hour” expressions as they trundled up to the entrance of the building.

  Long ago, firms had figured out that having a bored, minimum-wage guard on the door was actually more effective than having a sophisticated, AI-run security check-in. A few too many incidents with bots letting in people just like Fred and the Boggart, and incinerating legitimate, unexpected deliveries, had led to going retro. As advanced as bot tech was, there was still something to be said for a living element somewhere in the decision making; though Humph had heard rumors and conspiracy theories about some places experimenting with cyborgs and other gruesome inventions, fusing living beings with machines. As expected, waiting at a desk at the loading dock was a guy who looked like a tired basset hound, with the tell-tale whiff of whiskey about him, behind a little white desk with a rack of monitors on it. And old-timer like him was perfect for a gig like this; just there to collect a paycheck, too jaded and exhausted to ask too many questions other than, “When’s lunch?” Just another piece of the puzzle.

  “Delivery for Lab 3,” Fred said, as the guard waved them forward. It was a gamble, guessing at their “destination,” but it paid off this time. Places like this weren’t usually big on creatively named rooms. The guard took a box cutter and opened Fred’s container, and the exhaustion in his face was pathetic. He knew that if the delivery was for a specific lab, that lab expected it to be there in the morning. He also knew there was no one to get it there but him.…

  “Buddy, you look beat. We’ll haul this shit in for you, if you want,” the Boggart offered. “Us little guys gotta look out for each other.”

  The guard’s face brightened. “Thanks, bud. I got a herniated disk, and you know those damn insurance companies, they won’t do nothin’ about it until I’m crippled. I get off in about five minutes, and all I wanta do is lay down.”

  The Boggart had been counting on that. Counting on the fact that the human guard would probably be replaced by a simple locked and warded door after hours, and counted on the fact that showing up five minutes before second shift change would guarantee them at least an hour of undisturbed snooping. Their timing was truly a piece of luck, one of the few they’d had during this entire fiasco. “Ain’t that the truth. Take a load off, just point us where we need to go.” The guard gave them a generalized layout of the facility; where the administrative level was, engineering, and the labs. At the end of the description, he handed them both generic-looking nametags.

  “Wear these from this point on, if you don’t want to get zapped. You’ll see what I mean.” With that, they were buzzed through the doors into the main facility. The first thing that struck both Fred and Humph was how…average the facility was. It looked like the inside of any other office building; people in cubicles, at desks in offices, and no one paying them very much mind at all. There were security cameras in all of the usual places. There wasn’t any sort of oppressive, totalitarian feel to the place. It was boring. Maybe this is how evil, Norm evil, really looks: mundane.

  All of that changed once they reached the labs. The hallway they had turned down ended abruptly with two very solid doors; they looked like blast-doors from a distance, and Humph confirmed it once they were closer. The really scary thing about the hallway were the two security bots that manned the entrance.

  But the bots didn’t even power up as they approached, and the doors opened silently for them. Some sort of passive scanning, probably; judging from the cannons affixed to the bots, Humph surmised that he and Fred would’ve been little more than scorch marks if they weren’t wearing the badges that the guard had given them. The doors stood open, waiting for them to pass; the bots stood watch, still no indicator that they were even active. The hallway beyond was pristine; gleaming white on white, with the faint smell of medical antiseptic, the kind of smell that hospitals always seemed to have. They didn’t see anyone for what felt like ages; just more hallways, all the exact same. Most of the doors they passed by were unmarked; several were marked “Storage,” and more than a few of those were plastered with warnings about the contents.

  Boggart spotted a door marked “Lab 3,” and on impulse, pushed his dolly toward it. The door opened before he reached it, and Fred followed him. “What’re we doing?” Fred hissed.

  “I figured whatever you needed to do, you could probably do from the lab,” the Boggart replied. “No? I figured outside the labs, the computers are probably kept from accessing the lab stuff, but I bet there’s no such security keeping one lab from looking at another’s work.” He looked for a storage closet, found one, and opened the door, shoving his box inside. Chances were, no one would even look at the boxes for a week. Maybe more, given how much dust was in here and how barren the shelves were. He took Fred’s dolly from him, and did th
e same with Fred’s box. Fred was giving him a stare that said How the hell did you figure that out?

  “I’m smarter than I look,” Boggart said, and wiggled his fingers at Fred. “Make with the computer magic.”

  “We’ll have to get into the lab proper, use one of those computers. It’s going to be a closed network, otherwise we could have Jim help us out remotely. This place looks pretty secure, so no chance of a signal getting out of here, at least undetected.” Fred reached into his coveralls, retrieving a data pad and a few other little gizmos; tools of the trade for the experienced hacker.

  “Let’s get to it; I don’t imagine we’ll have much time once we start messing around in the lab proper.”

  The pair exited the storage closet, still pushing their dollies. The lab itself was open, with various technicians working at their stations; none of them seemed to pay much attention to the two workers as they made their way around. Past some thick glass was a clean room, complete with airlock. It was a tidy little operation; a place for everything and everything in its place. Humph found what he was looking for: a terminal off to the side, obstructed by some lab equipment.

  “Do your thing, furbag. Get whatever you can, and then we’re out of here.”

  Fred immediately set to working. He plugged some of the smaller gadgets into ports on the terminal, then hooked his datapad up to it as well. Humph was keeping one eye on Fred’s progress, with the other on the technicians. One thing he had noticed about this lab was that there weren’t any cameras here. At all. That was strange, and he didn’t like it one bit. It took a few minutes before he got any indication from Fred.

  “Humph, this is bad.”

  “No kidding, we need to get moving.” Some of the technicians had noticed the two of them, and were starting to stare in-between their tasks.

  “No, I mean this is all bad here. I’m getting next to nothing.”