Deprecated

by Michael Karr

  Carmine’s vision flashed as she instantly saw what Commander Harris was seeing. One of the nondescript housing unit buildings, with its brick exterior, square shape, and boarded windows. Out of the front door, strode a girl. She wore a faded green sweatshirt that looked a few sizes too big. Carmine couldn’t help but gag at the color. The girl’s short chocolate brown hair, had obviously not been brushed that morning. But her untidy appearance could not mask the fact that this was William Steele’s date from the party.

  If only…Carmine’s gaze followed the length of the girl’s right arm, from her shoulder to her hand. Was it there? The girl’s hand was angled just slightly away from Harris’s line of sight.

  Commander: can you get a clear visual of the back of her right hand? She communicated back to Commander Harris using their PNU link.

  I’ll try, came his reply.

  Carmine’s own view of the hand zoomed in suddenly, the vignetted corners of her vision indicating that the commander was now looking through a pair of binoculars. Still, the girl’s hand was angled away from the commander’s line of sight. It looked like there could be something there. Suddenly, the girl entered an alleyway, turning her back to the commander.

  Carmine let out a curse under her breath. Only by exerting a high level of self-control did she restrain herself from ordering Commander Harris from nabbing the girl right then and there. An order which might spoil everything. Patience.

  Switching visuals to McCormack, came the commander’s message.

  Carmine’s view of the girl flickered and changed. It took her a second to register what had happened. She was now looking at the girl from the front, walking toward her, deeper into the alley. Again the vignette of her vision indicated the magnified view of binoculars. Carmine didn’t know where McCormack was located, but it had to be far enough away not to draw the girl’s suspicion.

  Wherever it was, the location was perfect. Carmine fixed her attention on the back of the hand. Yes, there was definitely something there. Still, she wanted a clearer view.

  As if in answer to the request, the girl reached over her left hand and scratched the back of the right, turning it just enough so that Carmine could clearly see it. There, on the girl’s pale skin were the dark lines of a tattooed barcode.

  So, William Steele’s girlfriend really did live in the slums. Carmine froze the image of the barcode, used her PNU to scan it, and retrieved the associated records. An instant later, the scan and retrieval completed.

  Name: Rylee Lorraine Day.

  Carmine smiled.

  Follow her, she ordered, then severed the communication link.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Rylee listened through her earpiece for Serghei’s instruction to move in. It felt good to have it in again. Even with the static, she much preferred it to the disturbing thought-intruding communication of her PNU.

  Two days had passed since Grayson had contacted her about the plan he and Serghei contrived. The plan that—despite her better judgment—she had agreed to. She knew she should have stayed away from Grayson. Why couldn’t she? In the last forty-eight hours, she’d had countless opportunities to pull out her pistol and end it all. It would have been so easy. Not like what they were about to do.

  This was by far the stupidest thing she’d ever done. Stupid in the way that Russian roulette is stupid. Only what they were about to do could hurt a lot more people. Why in Desolation’s Thunder did she let Grayson talk her into it?

  She sat astride her Harley, parked inside an abandoned building near the border between the slums and the Elect district. The building used to be some kind of office space. A large open floor, now scattered with a few desks that had been smashed by gangs delighting in destroying things. The rest of the desks had likely been looted over a decade before. Dust, shattered glass, and papers littered the floor.

  Through one of the lower windows, its glass broken long before, she peered out into the street. Evidence of the previous night’s storm was everywhere. Toppled garbage bins, more busted windows, bits of trash plastered against the sides of buildings. They called such storms Wake Storms, sent to remind the people of the awful destruction Desolation had caused. The gale-force winds had kept her up most of the night. That was the lie she told herself, anyway. Truth be told, she doubted she would have slept at all had the night been quiet as a whisper.

  Apparently, the lack of sleep showed in her appearance. Enough so that her grandfather had brought up how tired she looked as they sat and ate their breakfast of peanut butter. He never did that. And she’d gone plenty of nights without any sleep before.

  A mental image of her grandfather suddenly filled her vision. It was so clear and vivid, she almost thought he was there with her. Yet another PNU trick? Her grandfather had discovered the depleted food rations. The ones she’d lost betting on a rat race when Duncan’s Warehouse burned to the ground. Instead of accusing her, or demanding answers, or punishing her, he’d simply gotten out a jar of the peanut butter. “Looks like it’s a special day,” he’d said.

  Even now she could taste the sweet flavor on her tongue. It made her think of that first day she’d met Grayson. If she’d managed to kill him that day, would she be in this mess right now? Probably not. Her grandfather, though…he’d be Deprecated. Grayson saved him. Grayson had also lied to her, and was an Elect, and…She didn’t want to think about Grayson. It only made her mad at him for not being there for her to be mad at. Or…something like that.

  Argh!

  She scratched the back of her hand. The spot was bright red and sore. There wasn’t anything else to do. Just wait, and not think about Grayson.

  Twenty minutes later, her earpiece hissed and came alive with Serghei’s voice. “The eagle has left the nest. I repeat, the eagle has left the nest.”

  “The eagle?” said Rylee. “What are you talking about?”

  “The CA,” Serghei replied. “He’s left the building. Time to move, folks.”

  “Why do you call him an eagle, man?” Feng’s voice broke over the line. “How about Tripe Face?”

  “Your suggestion lacks roots in any established colloquialism,” Serghei said. “Additionally, that phrase was never once used in any movie.”

  “Who cares? The idiots who made those movies were all tripe faces anyways.”

  “Guys?” Grayson’s voice came over the line. “Can we stay focused here?”

  “Aye, aye, captain,” Serghei said.

  A half-smile formed on Rylee’s lips as she rolled her eyes. It almost felt like the days before everything had become so…messed up. Freakishly, Grayson sounded like Preston. At least, with the whole stay-focused bit. This time, though, they weren’t just hunting down a few cocky Elect teenage boys. This was serious business. And she didn’t even have her rifle to help.

  “I’m moving out,” Rylee said, starting up her Harley with a roar.

  “Good luck, everyone,” Grayson added, and the line went silent.

  Leaning the bike so it was fully upright, she flipped back the kickstand, then shoved her helmet on. Then she rumbled out of the building, out through a doorless threshold, out into the street, toward the last place she wanted to go.

  * * *

  Grayson stood on the grass of Mt. Pleasant cemetery, at his feet the granite headstone engraved with his mother’s name. Sophie Lynn Steele. Unlike the other headstones in the small cemetery, hers was free of the moss that had overtaken the grass, headstones, and rotting benches.

  He had never known his mother. And frankly knew little about her. He knew she had dark hair, the same color as his own. That she was prettier than a man like his father deserved to have. That she attended The University of Washington, and earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Biomechanical Engineering, followed by a Master’s degree in Synthetic Neural Engineering. After which, she was hired by Steele Corp as a Junior Engineer. Ten years later, she married his father. Five years after that, Grayson was born. The same day she died.

  Twenty-one years ago. Gra
yson’s birthday had never been celebrated. It was a death day. November sixth. The day his mother died. The day he planned to kill his father. Of course, if he failed, it would likely become his own death day.

  He thought about his mother. He didn’t have any personal stories about her. He didn’t know what her favorite food was, what her hobbies were, or what she did for fun. His father never spoke to him about such things. Vaguely, he wondered if his mother would forgive him for what he was about to do. Wherever she was. He didn’t believe in an afterlife. There was no empirical evidence of one. Still, he found some comfort in imagining his mother—or some form of his mother—still existing in another sphere of existence, however irrational that notion was.

  “I wouldn’t do this if I knew another way,” he whispered, as if she could hear. “He’s a broken man. And he’s dangerous.”

  He hugged himself, trying to dispel the sudden chill that came over him. A weak, but biting wind pushed at his back, a reminder of last night’s storm. He couldn’t help but view the storm as a fitting portent of what this day would bring.

  The earpiece crackled and hissed. “Motorcade heading west,” Serghei said over the line. “Estimated arrival in four minutes.” The earpiece felt so…archaic to him. It was awkward too, like having a giant fly stuck in his ear, buzzing around. But Grayson had been too preoccupied with the problems, to code up an interface between the earpiece radio feed and his PNU. He reached up and adjusted it in his ear, wondering if he should have altered his priorities.

  Four minutes. Could he actually go through with this? More importantly, would his plan actually work? There was a high probability it would fail miserably. In his mind, he analyzed all the variables. All the unknowns. There were too many.

  He’d spent the last two days and nights coding, with a meager hour or two to sleep each day. Physically, he was exhausted. Mentally, he was drained. The only thing that had kept him fueled and functioning was Serghei’s stock of Mountain Dew.

  The situation was tenuous, at best. Years of experience told him the worst kind of code was hacked out by young hotshot coders who neglected sleep and personal hygiene.

  But he had no other option. If he hoped to stop his father, he needed to employ his RARA virus on more than two targets. More than three. Six, to be precise. His father and his five bodyguards. Until a few short hours ago, that would have never been possible. Either his PNU would have overloaded and shutdown, or else failed to process fast enough, fracturing any sense of reality.

  With his last-minute, untested, semi-coherent modifications, all that had changed. At the heart of it, the concept was so simple he wondered he hadn’t considered it originally. The model went back to the early days of computer science. Something called a distributed system.

  The idea was that a big computational task could be broken down into lots of smaller tasks and distributed across multiple computers. The individual computers would solve their subtasks in parallel, then combine their results.

  Simple, effective, and—he believed—capable of being utilized for his purposes. Only the other computers would be PNUs. The PNU of the infected target, in addition to experiencing an altered reality, would also involuntarily lend processing power to infect other targets. Enabling Grayson’s PNU to do less processing.

  Theoretically, that’s how it would work. Theoretically. In about one minute…

  The faint hum of approaching vehicles made him turn around. Three black cars drove up the street. His father’s motorcade. His father came, just as Grayson knew he would. Just as he came every year on the anniversary of his wife’s death.

  The motorcade stopped at the border of the cemetery.

  Grayson clenched the grip of the pistol concealed in his pocket and pushed down his fear. Time to put his code to the test.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Rylee parked her Harley on the south side of Steele Tower. She saw no point in trying to stash it someplace inconspicuous. Not when she was planning to waltz into the building in the full light of day. Pulling off her helmet, she jogged around to the front of the building, where she entered through the prominent glass doors of the main entrance.

  Her thoughts flashed back to the night of the party. Everything came back. The lights. The music. The leering faces. The man who’d tried to abduct her. The bloody bullet hole in his chest. All of it. Had only two days passed since that night? What little sleep she’d managed to get since then had been riddled with nightmares of this place.

  She willed herself to keep breathing, to slow down her careening pulse.

  No receptionist greeted her in the main lobby, the way she’d seen it done in many of Serghei’s movies. In a world where a person’s presence and identity could be known without verbal or visual communication, such jobs were redundant.

  Mounting the stairs, she climbed to the second floor. Though the room below and the mezzanine above were not brimming with drunken Elects, she still felt as if she were being watched. Likely, she was. At least, the CA and his gray suits weren’t in the building. Still, with a single thought, which was becoming second nature to her, she activated her PNU’s probing capability. She recalled Grayson’s warning about probing. Politeness and protocol could go to the devil. She didn’t want any surprise run-ins with any Elect.

  The doors to the laboratories accepted her PNU credentials without protest. No alarm. Grayson hadn’t been sure if her credentials would still work. The CA could have revoked her access after the incident at the party. Though, the fact that he hadn’t made her life easier unsettled her. Could this be a trap?

  “I’m in,” she whispered as she tapped her earpiece to activate the microphone.

  “10-4,” Serghei replied in her ear. “I’m monitoring the building’s entrance.”

  “Thanks,” she muttered. Not that it will do much good. If the CA’s bodyguards returned while she was still in the building, she’d be trapped. Just like last time. And that had gone so well.

  Inside, she didn’t bother donning the white lab coat. Her PNU-augmented vision showed her numerous people working in the lab room off the main hallway. Both the hallway and elevators looked clear. Steeling herself, she walked toward the elevator bank. It was time to find Preston. Again.

  * * *

  Grayson remained standing by his mother’s headstone as his father and his bodyguards approached. The look on his father’s face showed that he was not surprised to see him at the cemetery.

  Miles, the bodyguard who Grayson had tricked into letting him get away, planted himself in front of Grayson and looked down at him with an angry scowl. “Spread ‘em,” he said roughly. Grayson was not surprised by the request. Fine. He knew his code still worked on one person.

  Grayson lifted his arms and widened his stance, as Miles started patting down his chest. To Grayson, though, it felt more like the man was trying to collapse his rib cage.

  “Let him be, Miles,” said his father. “Do you really believe my own son would try and harm me? Especially here?”

  Miles hesitated before giving Grayson one last pat to the sternum then backed away. Grayson gave the bodyguard an obnoxious grin, as the man assumed his usual stance: hands clasped together at his front, feet shoulder-width apart.

  His father stepped forward and placed a hand on Grayson’s arm. He wore a long charcoal gray coat, buttoned all the way up to his neck. Grayson thought about how odd it was to see his father outside. Rarely did his father leave the polished interior of Steele Tower, out into the harsh world—into reality.

  In unison, they turned and faced the headstone. Neither spoke. For a fleeting moment, Grayson felt as if everything was back to normal. That this man who stood next to him—the man who he called father—was not trying to kill him. That they were a father and son, together to honor the memory of a wife and a mother. And then the moment vanished, as Grayson remembered why he was there.

  His father rarely spoke when they visited the cemetery. Except to call them to leave. He never shared anything about the wom
an buried beneath their feet.

  Grayson broke the silence. “Do you think she would have wanted you to kill the son she died giving birth to?”

  It was a calculated question. A cruel question. A desperate plea for sanity. But it just might—on this day of all days—touch on his father’s emotions enough to have the desired impact.

  Grayson turned and studied his father’s face. His father’s eyes remained fixed on the headstone, mouth screwed up, as if he’d just bit into something disagreeable. Grayson knew the face. It meant his father was chewing on his anger, preparing to respond in his customary calm manner. It also meant Grayson’s effort to wake up his father to his madness had failed.

  “Do not speak as if you could even begin to care for her, William,” he responded. And the words shocked Grayson with their coldness. “You have no idea what I suffer at her loss. Nor what I suffer for what I must now do.”

  “Don’t insult me!” replied Grayson. “You’ll be happy to be rid of me. Admit it. You’ve always resented me. As if I had killed her.”

  Wrong thing to say. Grayson knew it. Angering his father even more was not going to solve anything. But he couldn’t resist. For so many years he’d longed to say these things. Now, he found he couldn’t keep his feelings bottled up any longer. Besides, it wasn’t as if he was actually going to succeed in dissuading his father. He knew that even before he tried.

  His father turned his gaze on him. In his eyes, Grayson saw fire. “I could have been rid of you years ago if I had wanted it, son. You can trust that.”

  “So, all those years of letting me live atone for what you’re doing now?” Grayson scoffed. “You’re so magnanimous, father.”

  Well done, William. You’re just making it easier for him to go through with his plans. He needed to talk rationally with his father, not goad him on. That was something he had always struggled with. His ability to goad his father just came so naturally.

  “You think I find joy in any of this?” his father asked. “That I wanted things to be this way? I loved your mother more than you can ever hope to fathom. Scarcely had we been married a few years when she was stolen from me. Just as Desolation stole my dreams for the PNUs to change the world. Everything I worked for all those years—gone. All I have left is an ungrateful people to take care of, and a son who never loved me. A son who ought to bring me joy.”