‘There was a game in the very first days of cryptocurrencies, when people thought that’s all blockchain was good for. CryptoKitties. As basic as they came, but a fun way of showing how the blockchain could be used, and doing it with cats on the internet.’ She smiled as if remembering a more innocent time and frowned when neither Amanda nor Haber shared her pleasure. ‘Anyway. There’s a CryptoKitty on here. A rare one. You need to find another, and breed them. The offspring—or more accurately, the resulting block—will contain your key. Once you’ve got that, you can access the information.’
‘I’ve never heard of them,’ said Amanda.
‘No offence,’ said Ichi, ‘but there’s a lot you haven’t heard of. The game isn’t available anymore, the first generation architecture it relied on isn’t in use. It wasn’t much more than a proof of concept, although as with most of the early tech a lot of people lost money on it.’
Amanda’s wrist buzzed again but didn’t stop at the customary two pings, instead repeating itself over and over.
‘Your watch is going mad,’ said Haber conversationally.
Giving him a hard stare, Amanda pulled it up. There’s a substantial amount of comms centring on the museum. I would recommend leaving, said Tatsu.
‘What?’ asked Ichi. It had gone quiet around them. Over by Stornetta there was a rapid but hushed conversation. One of the young men detached themselves from Stornetta’s orbit and hurried over.
‘Professor Oku, we are worried Kumu isn’t safe today.’ He looked at Haber, and Amanda saw something approaching admiration in his eyes. ‘Your guests should leave and we need to make everything safe.’
‘How did you plan on getting back to the airport?’ asked Ichi.
They hadn’t, realised Amanda. She hadn’t thought beyond getting the drive read.
‘We have a car in the basement carpark. You have flights booked?’
‘Flexible tickets,’ said Amanda. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Hasn’t your tame AI told you already?’ asked the boy with a sneer painted across his lips. ‘You didn’t think we were going to let you in here without checking you out, did you? You’re probably more dangerous than the malware on the drive you’re holding.’ At her blank look he raised his eyebrows in disbelief. ‘Do you even know what’s riding around on your watch?’
Amanda held up her wrist. Tatsu’s face appeared momentarily, its mouth a flat line, eyes little more than slits. To her amazement, the boy took a step back.
‘What is going on?’ she repeated.
‘The government has decided today is a raid day,’ said the boy, taking hold of Ichi’s arm. Much more gently he said, ‘Professor, you need to get to Old Town.’
Ichi handed the drive back to Amanda. ‘You should go. We’ll give you a lift into Old Town. After it’s all died down, you can get a taxi back to the airport.’ She turned to go, but Amanda put a hand on her shoulder, with enough resistance to force her attention back her way.
‘What will they do?’
The boy tutted, rolling his eyes. ‘Professor, we’re going downstairs. You’ll take the lift?’
Nodding, they watched together as Haber followed after the boy, joined by Stornetta at the top of the stairs. There was no time to ask them where they were going.
‘They like to overturn our desks, beat up some of those who can’t keep their indignation under control. They’ll probably steal more of our solar panels, extort payments out of us, and then, if we’re really unlucky, take a few of us into custody on suspicion of being sympathetic to the Russians.’ She said it all while watching the floor empty. Everyone was calm, as if they were facing nothing more than an unwanted salesperson at the front door.
Amanda struggled to know what to say. After a while where they stood in silence with Ichi making no move to leave, she figured out they were facing an experience she had no way of relating to.
‘Is this normal for you?’ she asked slowly, trying not to sound careless or ignorant.
Ichi gave a clipped nod. ‘It varies from month to month. There’s no way of predicting it. Sometimes bad news provokes them, sometimes good. Sometimes it’s the captain on duty, or because some sergeant is bored. Mostly it’s because young people come here to make a difference, to tell others about the corruption threading through our government like a cancer. Sometimes it’s because I’m a woman and the men around here find the possibility of someone without a penis being wily and smart an intolerable slice of reality.’
Amanda shook her head. ‘From what you’ve said, I think your gender is one of the least offensive things going on here. There’s a bunch of things I can see them wanting to stop regardless that you’re a woman.’
‘Really?’ asked Ichi, clearly not seeking an answer, her words measured but gilt in anger. ‘And because you’re a woman as well, that makes you more right than me? Or perhaps your experience of the irrational hatred men in power have of women demanding their rights is limited to crying over why your male colleagues got better bonuses than you. It’s obviously one of the reasons you don’t believe I’m really Satoshi Nakamoto. After all, how many female quants have you ever met?’
‘Should we go?’ asked Amanda, wishing she’d never started. She disagreed with Ichi, on virtually every point, but Ichi’s acolytes had been adamant she needed to leave. Amanda had no desire to get caught up in whatever was going on.
Ichi started for the back of the floor, away from the windows and towards a pair of narrow elevator doors muttering all the while. ‘Heaven forbid a woman could come up with block chain, that all those men working on getting rich, on satisfying their need to pleasure themselves intellectually didn’t come up with the idea before me. Because my vagina means I can’t be good at math or engineering.’
Amanda wished she’d just shut up, but couldn’t see the point of saying anything out loud.
Her wrist buzzed. It’s not about Satoshi Nakamoto, wrote Tatsu. You need to leave now. Multiple different sets of security agencies are converging on Kumu with you their target.
Amanda stood still, ignoring the bemused look from Ichi who was stood in the lift compartment holding the doors open. ‘Are you coming?’ she asked.
She started into the lift just as the lights went out. Ichi looked up with a weary sigh. ‘This is new.’
Amanda grabbed her hand, pulling her from the interior back onto the floor. The glass ceiling yielded a cold white light, casting short shadows but leaving in darkness those places it didn’t directly illuminate. Cries of alarm reached up from below, fingers of fear seeking a way out.
Amanda ran as fast as Ichi could move towards the stairwell they’d used before. They found Stornetta coming the other way.
‘There you are. It’s not the government,’ he said. ‘The young ’uns are saying it’s the Russians.’
Ichi didn’t say anything, her mouth setting in a thin line across her face.
‘They’re here for me,’ said Amanda.
‘You?’ said Ichi.
Stornetta nodded to the stairs and they descended.
‘The drive. They want what’s on it. They’ve already tried to take it from me. Twice.’
‘Didn’t you think to warn us? Why would you come here and risk everything we’ve built?’
Amanda wanted to say she’d had no idea they were being followed, that she couldn’t conceive of anyone going to such lengths over anything. She’d never imagined events like these really happened, let alone with her at the centre.
Instead she said nothing.
‘C’mon,’ said Stornetta, refusing to let them slow down.
‘Is there no one who can help?’ asked Amanda, feeling it was all too impossible to just happen. The words felt childish, stupid, but she didn’t know what else to say.
‘Our lot might put up with us, but they’ll not shed any tears over Kumu being razed to the ground. They’ll shout about it in assembly tonight but they’ll not think of it twice after tomorrow.’
A loud pop echoed up from
beneath them. Ahead of them, Stornetta froze.
He looked over the side of the bannister, ducked back just as quickly. ‘How do we get to your car?’ he asked Ichi.
‘I can’t leave now,’ she said.
‘You stay and you’re going to wind up shot,’ he said.
Amanda looked over the edge, all she could see was figures moving in darkness below, shadows stretching and turning without sunlight to create them. Shouts sparked all around like poppers being let loose with no sense of coordination. More gunfire followed.
‘You can’t stay,’ said Amanda. She didn’t know what was going to happen, but she wouldn’t leave Ichi behind.
They ran down to the second floor, but Stornetta stopped them, cursing. ‘They’re coming up. Have you got another way outta here? Any other stairs?’
When Ichi didn’t immediately answer he grew restive, clenching and unclenching his fists.
‘It can’t be that hard!’
‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘I can’t think straight.’ The sound of running on the floor below, of panicked cries, flowed past them, a stink of terror they found hard to ignore.
The shooting wasn’t manic but controlled, snaps of one and three shots, never more, nothing sustained.
‘They’re killing everyone,’ said Stornetta. ‘Floor by floor.’ Ichi didn’t speak, but tears ran down her face and Amanda knew they were going to die right there on the stairs.
A trio of soldiers turned the corner coming up to meet them. The lead, dressed all in black with green-tinted goggles covering their eyes, raised a small compact rifle in front of them like it might bite back if brought too close to their masked face.
More gunfire, the shocks too close to tell how many shots were fired. The soldier at the rear of the pack spun around and collapsed to the floor. Stornetta barrelled into Amanda, wrapping one arm around her to shove her back along with him. Ichi stumbled up the stairs and they fell, together, around the corner onto the third floor.
Gunfire erupted just beneath them on the stairs: dozens of shots, then silence. The distorted sound of people speaking into radios just in front of their lips. Footsteps moving away.
‘It’s not just Russians,’ whispered Amanda.
They’re looking for you, but right now all the chatter is about stopping other agencies getting to you first, wrote Tatsu in glowing green letters on her wrist.
‘We can get through them,’ she said to Stornetta. ‘They’re fighting one another.’
He stared at her, his eyes wide. ‘You are one scary lady, lady.’ But he nodded and, helping Ichi to her feet and not letting go of her arm, he let Amanda lead them back down the stairs.
They crouched behind the bannister, peeking out into the darkness. The light from the glass wall cast a gloom into the floor, not enough to illuminate, just enough to grow a jungle of shadows in which bodies and soldiers easily hide.
‘We just have to go,’ hissed Amanda, adrenalin rushing through her like three double espressos.
‘We have to wait and see,’ said Stornetta, trying to hold them back.
Amanda was having none of it. She scuttled around him and, seeing no one in the gloom beyond, ran towards the proper darkness of the back wall. She reached it without being shot, even as gunfire continued to sound around them. She looked back to see the other two, Stornetta with an arm around Ichi’s shoulders, hobbling across the floor.
Breathing heavily, they sat and collected their thoughts. A pair of armed soldiers, their clothes a different pattern even in the darkness, ran past, left to right.
‘Where do we go from here?’ she asked Ichi.
Ichi couldn’t, or wouldn’t speak. She managed to tip her face to their left.
‘The stairs, they’re along this wall?’ asked Stornetta.
Ichi nodded, her eyes glinting pools of grief in the darkness.
Amanda waited for Stornetta to lead them on, but he was watching her, waiting for her. The sensation was odd, she was running on instinct and a deep desire to live, but he was deferring to her.
Fair enough, she thought, not knowing what else they were going to do if he was in charge. She’d assumed he knew about this kind of shit, but if he didn’t know what to do, couldn’t make them any safer than she could—which was precisely not at all—then she knew how to make decisions. That’d have to be enough.
Bent over, legs bent so their backs ached after just a few metres, they stumbled their way along the back wall, freezing every time intruders passed by. For their part, the different parties continued to fight one another, focussed not on searching for people like Amanda but in staying alive when they ran unexpectedly into each other.
Amanda could see a darker hole in the wall, maybe ten metres ahead; presumably the stairway they were hoping to find. Before they reached it, she hit something soft with her leading foot and ended up on her face, wondering what the hell was going on.
Stornetta came piling over, dropping Ichi.
Voices whimpered as he approached, causing him to pull up sharply just as he looked set to put the boot in hard.
‘Don’t hurt us,’ said a woman’s voice. Amanda recognised Lisandra, hands wrapped around her body and face turned away in preparation for a beating.
There were three of them, hiding in the dark but paralysed by fear.
‘Where are the others?’ asked Ichi, seeming to find herself again. One of them, a young man, burst into tears at the question.
‘This is on you,’ Ichi said to Amanda.
Her words struck Amanda in the throat, closing her up.
‘I thought you people were armed to the teeth, always ready to shoot up the Man if he came calling,’ said Stornetta.
‘They’re children,’ said Ichi, loud enough that Amanda looked around frantically, hoping no one had heard them. ‘This isn’t some hardcore American libertarian camp. They’re here trying to make the world work, not make themselves safe.’
‘Enough,’ said Amanda. She pulled at Lisandra, dragging her along as she started covering the remaining ground to the stairs.
‘We won’t all fit in the car, you know,’ said Ichi pointedly.
Amanda ignored her, stomach turning over. She had no right to demand Ichi gave them a lift to safety. If they tried to leave her behind, she had no idea what would happen.
They slowly made their way down the stairs. Coming to the first floor, with two more flights to go, they paused, crouching down low as torchlight swept across the floor beyond the glass doorway.
Whoever was searching didn’t pause. The gunfire was muffled from their position, but it was almost entirely on the floors above them. A succession of rapid exchanges of fire suggested a bitter fight underway, but Amanda could only hope it meant they were clear to reach the car.
Alone again, they descended the last two flights of stairs, emerging into the car park. Emergency lighting threw fuzzy red and feeble white light between thick concrete pillars. Electronic buzzing filled the background, but nothing moved.
Ichi held Lisandra’s hand, the four natives holding onto each other like school kids on a day trip. She pushed past Amanda, pressing on into the carpark.
The car was a small four-seater German runabout covered in grime with, orange paint peeling under the dirt. Haber was stood next to it, a rifle held casually in his arms.
‘I wondered when you’d show up,’ he said, a strained look on his face. Stornetta hurried over and the two of them embraced briefly.
‘Well isn’t this a pickle,’ said Stornetta, stepping back to assess the space available. The car park was otherwise empty, and Amanda’s thoughts of somehow commandeering a second vehicle evaporated.
‘Sure we can all fit in,’ said Haber. ‘Question is, who’s going to drive?’
‘It’s my car,’ said Ichi.
‘No offence, but are you really ready to drive like a mad eejit to get away from the lunatics upstairs?’ asked Haber.
‘I’m driving,’ said Stornetta, holding out a hand.
; Ichi pursed her lips and didn’t move. After a few moments, Lisandra shook at her arm.
‘Give him the keys!’
‘You’re going to die in a ditch over driving out of here?’ asked Stornetta.
Ichi handed over her keys without saying anything.
Stornetta opened up the passenger doors. ‘Get in, everyone.’
Haber took the front passenger seat and left the rest of them to squabble over the space in the back. They fit four in, but there was no space for the last of them, who Amanda recognised as one of the young men who’d been mooning over Stornetta earlier. From the back, where she sat, under Lisandra’s horizontal body, she demanded Haber let the boy sit on his lap.
Stornetta and Haber exchanged a look. ‘Pervert,’ said Stornetta, but by then the boy was clambering into the front, trying to find space for his legs and arms. Doors barely closed, Stornetta started the car’s ignition, the electric motor jerking the car forward in silence.
They drove slowly around the carpark until they came to the ramp. As they did so, a square of white light opened up to their left.
‘Crap,’ said Haber whose rifle was stacked uselessly between him and the door.
‘Got it,’ said Stornetta and slammed his foot onto the accelerator. The car sped up smoothly, but without any sense of urgency.
Whoever came through the door fired at them, but the first round went wide. Then they were on the ramp and spiralling up towards the ground floor. More bullets ricocheted off concrete, but their pursuit fell behind out of sight.
They emerged onto the ground floor, a long straight road leading them under Kumu and out a different way than they’d come in. Right in the middle of the road two men were wrestling. Stornetta kept driving.
‘What are you doing?’ screeched Ichi. For once, Amanda agreed with her.
‘Those two will kill us as soon as look at us. I’m not stopping for anyone until we’re out of here.’
He kept driving. At the last moment, the two men looked their way, frozen in their deadly embrace as the car bore down on them. With a crunching thump they were on the bonnet, over the roof and behind them, their bodies rolling with bone breaking kinetics until they were lost out of sight as the car negotiated another curve. The windscreen held without breaking.
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