But why do that and then give the cure to both enemies?
They didn’t have time for field trials. They couldn’t test Fade before they used it, and it got away from them. Too contagious. It hit everyone so fast no one knew which side set it loose. Ascendant thought it would kill everyone. They gave away the cure for PR and came up with the alien crap to keep people from finding out where it really came from.
“Maya?” asked Sarah. “Are you okay? You look like you want to kill someone.”
She relaxed with a sigh and explained her theory about Fade while Pope drove them into an underground parking area below a dingy apartment building on the high end of low.
“Never thought about that before, but I can see it happening. That shit came out of nowhere,” said Pope. “I mean, my unit was ready for NBC, and we were small enough to avoid the worst of it, but we saw some awful things before the Xeno showed up.”
Genna grumbled. “When they started sendin’ out the vac shots and the Xeno to us, no one was fightin’ for a country anymore. Wasn’t enough of one left. We all just tried to survive. Even the Koreans. Sometimes we’d trade ammo, but we had these former officers get the emperor complex and make little kingdoms. Koreans would be at war with other Koreans. Our guys sparred with our guys over territory. Ascendant probably gave away the Xeno as a middle finger to the government for not paying them. Or maybe they figured out they’d killed everyone.”
Pope pulled into a parking space by a thick square column. A fist-sized gouge in the concrete under ‘04’ in flaking blue paint still held the bullet that had made it. The console shut down, darkening the van.
“Are we going to live here now?” asked Sarah, her voice small.
“No.” Pope opened his door. “Just meeting some people. Maybe stay here a night or two depending on how it goes.”
“’Kay.”
Maya pulled the side door open and jumped down, reaching back in for her bag of clothes.
“You can leave them in the van. We won’t be here that long.” Genna patted her on the head.
Sarah climbed out.
“Okay.” Maya pushed the door shut.
She followed behind Genna and Pope, with Sarah at her side, across the parking area. Sarah glided off to the left to avoid walking in a shallow black puddle. When she rounded the other side and got close again, Maya laughed.
“What?” Sarah gave her a look.
“You have shoes on now and you walked around the puddle. If you didn’t, you’d have gone through it.”
“I don’t wanna get them dirty. I just got them.” She poked Maya in the side. “They feel so weird.”
Maya faked exasperation. “That’s the entire point of shoes, so you don’t have to worry about stepping on bad stuff.”
A dark-skinned man in a grey jumpsuit dragged a wheeled dumpster out of a cinder-block-walled corridor and passed between them and the elevator. He offered a brief smile before continuing left to the ramp. Pope returned a quick wave. The elevator opened as soon as he touched the call button. After everyone got in, Genna selected the thirty-first floor. Soon, the doors opened again to reveal a corridor with pale blue-green carpet and neat but plain walls. A few spots of plaster patch peeked out from behind small art prints hung at strange heights, halfway down the wall or even close to the floor. An aroma similar to bread left a little too long in the oven lingered in the air. Tall, rectangular silver panels lined both sides, metal doors without knobs. Each had a small control panel in the wall to the right with a few buttons and a tiny screen.
“Zero’s picked a five-star place.” Pope swiped his finger at a low-hanging picture as he passed.
“Beats his old haunt,” said Genna. “I need a disinfectant wipe just from thinking about it.”
“Five-star apartments are overrated,” muttered Maya.
Pope stopped a few doors past the middle of the hall and knocked. A moment later, a tiny light winked on at eye level. It went out, and the door slid sideways into the wall with a soft scrape, revealing Zeroice, his neon-blue hair hanging loose around his bare chest. A tattoo on his left pectoral depicted a stick-figure man at a desk with a wire going into the side of his head, a skull surrounded by a jagged star. Cartoon electrification.
“Hey. ’Mon in.” Blue silk pajama pants swooshed with each step he took back into the apartment.
“At least you’re wearing pants this time,” said Genna.
“I was wearing pants last time too.”
The door closed behind them.
“You were?” Genna put her right hand on her hip, leaving her left arm hanging. “Where’s Doc?”
“So? They were short.” Zeroice flopped at his desk and swung his chair around to face the room. “He’s on the way. Authority detained him near the gate.”
Maya glanced at a queen-sized bed covered in boxes of electronics, bundles of wire, and men’s clothes.
“Shit, what now?” asked Genna.
“Nothing like that. Sounded like a bunch of people got fucked up by a drone crash and he scanned as a doctor.”
“Oops,” said Pope.
“Nah.” Zeroice laughed, pulling his hair out of his face and tucking it behind his shoulders. “South end. Not your fireworks show in Dublin. He oughta be here soon.”
Sarah nudged Maya and flared her eyebrows.
“I dunno,” muttered Maya on the way to the sofa where she took a seat. When Sarah hopped up next to her, she shrugged. “Guess we just sit and wait.”
“So where do we stand?” asked Pope. “Any luck?”
“Well, you know the routine. Good news and bad. I worked out a way into the Ascendant network. There’s a decent chance it’ll give me access to the data we need, but”―he looked at Genna―“you aren’t going to like it. Not even a little bit.”
“I already don’t like the sound of that.” She tried to fold her arms but cringed and decided against it.
Zeroice held his hands up, shrugging with a cheesy smile. “Ascendant has a dark fiber line that connects their two main buildings in the Sanc, plus runs out to a facility they have in Aberdeen. That fiber isn’t accessible to any outside networks. It’s their internal private system. There’s no physical route between it and the AuthNet, so the only way onto that segment is to either get into their building or tap the fiber line.”
“Okay. What about that is supposed to piss me off?” Genna raised an eyebrow.
“Unless your Brigade friends have access to heavy digging equipment, or you feel like getting into a firefight, there’s only one spot with feasible access to the line.”
Maya sat up tall. “He wants me to do something.”
Genna spun around to look at her. “What?”
“Why else wouldn’t you like it?” Maya thought of the old woman from the clothing shop, her granddaughters orphaned by Fade. “What do I have to do?”
Two rapid knocks came from the door.
“I got it.” Pope pulled a knife and crossed the room.
“Well.” Zeroice sighed and gave Genna a ‘please don’t hit me’ smile. “The fiber line runs underground. I found a spot where it shares an AuthNet backbone conduit located in a pipe tended only by bots. There’s a repeater unit there we can use, so we wouldn’t even need to tap the fiber.”
“House call.” Doc Chang strolled in carrying a metal case. “Took one to the arm? Didn’t I tell you to rest after that broken rib?”
Genna sat on the foot of the bed, glaring at Zeroice. “Just a little splinter in my shoulder. Damn tree got in the way of our helicopter.”
“Pipe’s too small for an adult, right?” asked Maya.
Zeroice nodded. “Yeah. That’s why it’s only bots. Used to be a water line, but they repurposed it during the rebuild. A nice clear shot across the Sanc with two-inch thick steel walls. You’re so damn small, you could get in there and add a couple components to the box, give me a wide open door.”
Maya nodded. “Okay.”
“There’s got to be something else.�
�� Genna grunted as Doc unwound the bandage. “We just got her back. I ain’t riskin’ her. We need another plan.”
“I can do it,” said Maya.
Zeroice tapped his finger to his lips in thought. “Well, I figured you’d say that so I have an alternate.”
“Good.” Genna’s eyes flared wide; she grabbed the mattress and squeezed. “Shit. Doc.”
“Sorry.” He held up the conical wad of gauze on tweezers that Pope had packed into the wound. Blood running down her arm stopped on the pad he held against her skin to catch it. “Can’t leave this in there.”
“Alternate plan: A team infiltrates the basement level of Ascendant Tower, sneaks past an initial security checkpoint and overrides the elevator to the sixth floor. There’s a forty-five-meter-long corridor with motion tracking sentry guns that leads to another security checkpoint with four to six guards. From there, an access controlled door leads to the primary network center. If you go in hard, you’d have two-ish minutes to find the right component cabinet, install the tap, and get out before the place is covered in blueberry syrup.”
Genna’s glare hardened. “That ain’t no alternate plan, that a bunch of horseshit to justify makin’ a little girl do somethin’ stupid.”
“How dangerous is it?” asked Maya.
“No,” said Genna.
Maya slid from the couch and walked over, standing halfway between Zeroice and Genna. “If they didn’t think anyone could fit down there, they wouldn’t put anything in it that could hurt me.”
“He said robots.” Genna winced as Doc cleaned the wound. Sweat covered her face and forehead in beads.
Zeroice drummed his fingers on his knees. “They’re designed to scan the cable for damage and deal with rats. There’s three possible dangers to the kid going down the passage. One, she gets physically stuck. Two, a robot senses her and sets off an alarm. Three, someone notices you”―he nodded at Genna―“loitering around the opening, and calls the Authority.”
“Just don’t look poor,” muttered Sarah.
“There’s―ahh shit!” Genna clamped her jaw shut, shaking as Doc injected a silvery-white substance into the hole in her shoulder. She shuddered, fighting past the pain to gasp, “No countermeasures down there?”
“Nothing that should be deadly to a person, even one her size.” Zeroice leaned back in his chair, steepled fingertips together at his chin like a mad scientist. “They didn’t install many defenses because they didn’t think anyone would ever get down there.” Zeroice held up a plastic box with a circuit board and dangling wires about the size of a pack of cards. “Anyone small enough to get in there would be more likely to chew on this than know what to do with it.”
“Can’t you hack one of those bots to do what you need?” asked Pope.
“The pipe is too deep and thick for wireless. I can’t get to the bots. I’d have to hack into the primary AuthNet Admin channel to access the control routines for the whole Sanc, and that’s a whole lot harder for something basically a child can do.”
“If wireless signals don’t work down there, how are you going to get in with that box?” asked Maya.
“Alternate cable run. On your way out, you’ll unspool a wire to a transmitter Genna sets up by the pipe opening. It won’t matter if anyone finds it in an hour. Not like we’re trying to leave a permanent stealth access point. We only need that one bit of data.”
“I’ll go.” Maya took a step toward Zeroice. “What do I have to do?”
Genna stifled a growl at whatever Doc did to her arm. “Baby….”
“Are you sure?” asked Sarah, walking up behind her. “There might be rats in there. I could go.”
Zeroice looked at the girls. “Uhh. I don’t think you’d fit. It’s going to be a little tight for her, and there’s nothin’ to her.”
Sarah lifted her shirt to show off her stomach and ribs. “I’m skinny, too.”
Pope patted Maya on the shoulder. “She’s got some experience crawling through pipes. I can rig a harness to pull her back if she gets wedged. What’s the distance from entry point to objective?”
“Motherf–” Genna looked down. “If something happens to her….”
“I’m moving to Panama before you find me.” Zeroice chuckled. “About fifty meters. The entry point is a maintenance hatch for manual insertion of robots. It probably hasn’t been opened in years.”
Pope nodded. “Doable.”
“The hell,” muttered Genna. “Are you sure?”
“All set.” Doc patted the replaced bandage. “The gel will evolve into replacement tissue in about eight hours. The more you use the arm, the longer it takes.”
“I’m ready,” said Maya.
“Doc, can you check the girls? We got hit with CS. Probably some custom cocktail. I think it had a sedative in it.”
He nodded and headed over to Sarah.
“Cool.” Zeroice stood and gathered some supplies. “Got two BMA uniforms so you can act like workers.” He held up a blue jumpsuit with ‘Baltimore Municipal Authority’ stenciled across the back. “Should keep most people from buggin’ you while you’re waiting by the opening.” He tapped a lunchbox-sized device. “This is the transmitter you’ll hook the line up to once it’s active. As long as it’s outside the pipe, it should be good.” He handed the smaller device to Maya. “This is the trickiest part.”
She looked at it. A shroud of off-white plastic wrapped around the electronics, covering it except for the underside of the circuit board and a flange along the narrow end with hundreds of contacts, like a cartridge to be plugged in. Three wires dangled from the opposite end, one with a Cat-5 socket, one with a fiber connector, and one with a five-pin metal prong.
“C’mere.” Zeroice slid his chair to the side so she could get closer to his monitor. He pointed at a diagram of a box. When he tapped a key, the front face animated opening. “You’ll pull the shroud up like this to get at the insides.”
“Okay. Is that the tricky part?”
“Wiseass.” He smiled and pointed at a row of four rectangular sockets along the left side under the hatch. “Plug it in the third one down from the top, with the circuit side facing to the right and the wires toward you.”
“I can still smell it in her hair, and her eyes are red.” Doc patted Sarah on the shoulder. “She should hop in a shower. Keep the water cool. If it’s too hot, her pores will dilate and the agent will irritate her skin. And you should wash any clothes that got exposed—twice.” He tapped on Sarah’s chest while she breathed, his ear by her mouth. “Sounds like there may be some inflammation of her lungs, but it’s not enough to be alarming.”
Genna nodded.
Maya turned the cartridge over to match his description. “Okay. I’m not that stupid. I know the edge with the contacts needs to go into the connector inside.”
“The Cat-5 goes to the wire you run back outside. Ignore the fiber; we don’t need it here.” He pinched the odd plug. “This one is for power. It goes to the AUX port here.” He tapped the diagram.
Maya glanced up at him. “You said this was tricky.”
“Heh. Sorry. Not used to kids your size having the attention span to absorb this sorta stuff.”
She tucked the device into the thigh pocket of her fatigue pants. “Let’s do it.”
Doc Chang beckoned Maya over. She approached and pulled her shirt up so he could listen to her breathing. He examined her for a while, then patted her on the head. “Her breathing’s a little rougher. Smaller lungs. Again, nothing to be overly alarmed about as long as they keep getting fresh air. Should get both of them rinsed off ASAP.”
“Hey, mind if I ask who you’re sellin’ the Xeno formula to?” Zeroice closed the diagram and opened another window where white text scrolled over black.
“We’re not selling it.” Maya shook her head, arms folded, and held her head high. “We’re going to send it to every pharma corp capable of producing it.”
“What?” Zeroice blinked. “You know how much thi
s is worth?”
Maya glared. “Yes. And that’s exactly why we have to give it away. There’s no use for Xenodril anymore aside from Ascendant releasing Fade to kill people for profit. If they can’t make money on it, they won’t bother.”
“Hope you know what you’re doing, kid,” said Zeroice.
“I do.” Maya offered a resolute nod. “This is for Sam.”
Genna’s eyes welled with tears. When she raised her arm, Maya ran into a hug.
28
The Conduit
Genna decided to lay low for the rest of the day, keeping Maya and Sarah with her at Zeroice’s new apartment. Genna dragged them into the bathroom, sharing an irritating chilly shower to clear the remnants of the CS agent. She rinsed out the girls’ eyes and made sure they cleared any possible traces of chemical contamination from their bodies before sticking her face into the stream.
They all wore towels for an hour or two while Genna washed and dried their clothes. Even though they’d gotten new things from the store, any chemicals on their skin had absorbed into the fabric.
Genna and Pope decided to make their move the next day, after Pope had a chance to recon the area and get whatever tools necessary to open the hatch. The comment about ‘doing this for Sam’ made Genna clingy, not that Maya minded. Zeroice set them up with some video games, a system far better than the arcade games in the basement at home and almost as good as the one at Vanessa’s.
Still, co-op with Sarah made the time fly.
Pope returned in a few hours with Chinese take-out for everyone and a big wrench.
“Planning on doing some heavy construction, or is that for breaking skulls?” asked Zeroice.
“Heh.” Pope tossed the enormous tool up and caught it by the handle. “Multipurpose.”
He’d also picked up a nylon climbing harness that Maya tried on. A rope clamped to the center of her chest would provide an emergency escape if she became wedged and couldn’t move on her own. That night, the girls slept between Genna and Pope on the bed, while Zeroice couch-surfed. Maya couldn’t remember ever having felt so safe.
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