by Damien Boyes
I’ll go in from the top and bypass all that ground level security entirely. Not a great plan, but anything’s better than a suicide run in the front door.
That leaves only one last loose end. Once xY sends the shyft, I still need to find another body to use it with.
With as many cyphers as we chased over the past weeks, I thought finding a skyn to borrow for a few hours wouldn’t be too hard but so far all my enquiries have fizzled. I don’t know where I’m going to find one.
My only chance now is lucking into another cypher using Galvan’s sweep. Chaddah hasn’t had my Service feed access cut yet, if I hit the streets, maybe I’ll stumble across an illegal body I can steal. I don’t like it, but I don’t know what else to do.
xYvYx blows his deadline by two hours and I’m pacing circles in my small apartment when the IMP finally chimes through. I ack the call and xY’s first words cause my face to prickle with panic.
“Before we begin, let’s dispense with this Gibson bullshit,” he starts, his voice dripping with superior attitude. “I know who you are—Detective Finsbury Gage, Toronto Police Service.” My mouth is open but I have nothing to say. My brain won’t make words. He knows who I am. “By some amazing coincidence you were killed by Amit Johari—Eka—isn’t that a fucking blast? Ten billion people in the world and look how closely we’re all connected. It blows my mind, it really does. You went looking for him and that lead you to me and now here we are, your life in my hands.” He’s silent for a second and when I don’t respond he continues. “I’ll take your complete lack of participation in this conversation as an acknowledgement I’m now the one in charge. Imagine what would happen to your career if your bosses knew what you’ve been up to. Stealing evidence. Colluding with a known rithmist. Shyfting. My word, the trouble you’d be in.”
“What do you want?” I say, my voice gruff. He doesn’t know I’m not a cop anymore. He doesn’t understand there’s nothing he can do to hurt me.
“Oh, so you can speak? Good, I was starting to think you’d stroked out.”
“Did you finish what I asked you for?”
He laughs on the other side of the comm. “Oh, that? Sure. I worked up a way for Reszos to jump skyns months ago—that was nothing. I’ve spent the last two days working on you. You’re onto Eka and I know whatever it is you need that shyft for, once I give you what you want you’ll leave me with the biggest set of blue balls the world has ever seen. That’s not going to happen. I want to see Amit on his knees even more than you do—and I called dibs years ago. He cheated me out of my life, stole the Prime Coder championship out from under me—” His voice thins and his breathing grows shallow. “How is it fair, a kid with a brain wired for code can show up and compete with the normal people? The game was rigged from the start.” He clears his throat and the attitude oozes back into his voice. “You were going to use that shyft to to get Eka, and I’d never have my chance to out him for the fraud he is. I can’t let you do that. So this is the plan instead—you work for me, or I post your dox for the world to see, everything you’ve done. You’re mine now, Finsbury. Understand?”
I do. I learned all about him when he opened his dox to me. He hates Eka too. Started way before he was xYvYx, back when he was Darien Cole and Amit Johari stole the Prime Coder championship from him. xY’s been searching for Amit ever since.
“I understand,” I say, stalling. “What do you want me to do?”
“Good boy.” I can hear his smug grin. “What I want isn’t anything more than you were already planning.” He knows who I am. So what? My life’s over anyway, what worse can he do to me? “I want you to bring me Eka’s rithm.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” I ask.
He snorts. “Don’t pretend you haven’t got all that figured out. I’m sure you have some grand plan. That’s why you need my shyft. But instead of how your plan was supposed to end, you’ll send his Cortex to me.”
“You want his Cortex?”
“I want his rithm. I want his mind.”
“What for?”
“Years of redress.”
I feel a flicker of connection between us—he wants Eka to hurt as much as I do—but snuff it out immediately. He is in the process of blackmailing me. “I still need the shyft.”
“I know. That’s what makes this so delicious. I can’t believe how wonderful this has all worked itself out. You get your shyft, and copy yourself a back-up crew. Maybe two of you—your minds working in concert, Revved to the tits—maybe you could take down a superintelligence. A very clever plan—and very, very illegal.” He’s not wrong. I’m about to turn myself into a cypher. A few days ago I was shooting cyphers in the face. “How completely consumed with irony are you right now?” He laughs, almost giddy, his voice lilting.
“What do you want?” I ask, keeping my tone neutral.
“You really have to ask that?” he says, as if the answer were obvious. “You’re going to kill Eka. I want my revenge, same as you.”
“Then why these fucking games?” I ask, my frustration slipping through. “Send me the shyft and let me go kill him.”
“No,” he says, his voice modulated condescending patience. “You don’t understand. I want to be there when you find him. I want to feel it.”
“You what?”
“I want to be in there with you—in your head. Watching your every move straight through your eyes, feeling your body like it were mine. “And Finsbury,” he says, his voice lowering and the audio rotating to sound like he’s up next to my ear, “also know that, not only will I be inside you, but when the time is right, when we have Eka in our sights, I’ll take control.” He pauses and whispers, “Work you like a puppet.” I yank my head away from his invisible breath on my ear.
Fuck him. No way I let him inside my mind, give him the power to make me a spectator in my own head. Not for anything. I’ll manage without his shyft if I have to. I can come in alone on the roof, I’ll have the surprise on my side—
“Not going to happen,” I tell him. “I’ll do it on my own.”
He laughs. “If you could have done it without me, you would have. Eka killed your wife. Chewed her up and spit her out. I read the coroner’s report— Eeek. What a mess.” He hisses in a breath and the sound conjures an image of Connie’s final tortured face, and I suddenly want nothing more than to see the terrified life seep from xYvYx’s eyes. “You want him to suffer and I don’t blame you. Don’t worry, I promise you, he’ll suffer—but I’ll be the one who pulls the trigger. These are the conditions.”
The shock has boiled away now and the anger’s resurged with a vengeance. It’s become so familiar, it no longer burns. This anger’s cold. Calculated. Instructs me on exactly what I need to do.
I let loose with a sigh, like I’ve accepted defeat.
“Fine,” I say, contrite. Playing the loser. He’s right, I need his shyft—but I don’t need him once I have it. “Send the shyft. You can have your revenge.”
“I knew you’d see reason,” xY says, his voice deepening with self-satisfaction.
He wouldn’t be so smug if he knew I have his address.
I’d put trace duct in the drive I found in Eka’s bedroom and when I call up the last location the dust pinged, the position hasn’t changed. Still shows a location in a secluded house in the mountains overlooking Boulder, Colorado.
“Let’s get this over with,” I say. “The shyft. When can I expect it?”
“It’ll be on a drone within the hour,” xY says, eager. “When’s the show start?”
“Tomorrow night,” I say as I move up the reservation on my charted hopper. With stops to recharge, I should be able to make Colorado in six or seven hours.
“Don’t keep me waiting,” xY trills and the call drops and I start gathering a bag. One more chore on my end-of-life list.
Before I kill Eka, I need to make sure Darien Cole—AKA xYvYx—won’t cause any more trouble.
***
[18:52:56. Friday, May 10, 2058]<
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Cole’s house is a monastic retreat on a Colorado hilltop, with views west to the Flatiron peaks and east to the Denver valley. It’s a beautiful spot, at the centre of thirty-five acres of tall pine and sprawling cottonwood, the house all local-sourced lumber and corrugated metal siding and massive widows. Modern caveman chic. It’s much more austere than I would have expected from a man I first met parading around the arKade in a skyn with a flaming red mohawk.
With the wide-open property, the architecture-feed show house, and the number of top-of-the-line bots I’ve spotted prowling around the grounds, this whole set up here must have run in the tens of millions. Darien Cole has done well for himself.
I dropped the hopper a half-klick away and approached on foot, assault rifle hanging at my side and a handgun in my belt. Cole is paranoid, so I expected the heavy security—but the seclusion of his house is a weakness. With the communication satellite coverage still not back to one hundred percent, even now, almost thirty years after the war—especially out here where it’s peaceful—he’ll be relying on ground-based signal repeaters to access the link. I spent the last hours of the day scouting the three nearest connection points to Cole’s compound and set timed doorcharges to disable them. In fifteen minutes the charges will blow and kill Cole’s connection to the world. That’s when I’ll make my move.
I’ve been watching the house for the better part of an hour, moving from pine to pine around the perimeter, watching and waiting. His security is subtle. I can’t see the cameras but I know they’re around somewhere. He’ll probably have heat and pressure sensors too, but there’s only so much I can do. I can’t stop Cole from seeing my approach, but hopefully I’ll be close by the time he does.
I took a few slow swings around the house, observing from various angles, but because the house is built on a hill I couldn’t get a good view inside. It’s a long simple rectangle with rooms along the north end and a large, open-concept kitchen and living area at the south. The western windows overlook the mountains and the entrance is through the east wall. There’s a big garage out back with the door rolled down.
I haven’t seen any other people, but couldn’t get a good look without exposing myself to one of the lawbots stalking the property. And not civilian-grade housebots either—lawbots. Like the Service AMP runs. Armed and dangerous enough to deter unwanted guests. I can only hope Cole hasn’t somehow wrangled an AMP of his own to run his security too.
If I were still a cop—and not sneaking in here to keep a shady rithmist from blackmailing me—I’d call for back-up. I’ve learned that lesson at least: know when to ask for help.
Learned it just in time for my help to burn out.
I’m on my own, so I’ll have to hope maintaining a tame AMP is beyond Cole’s means. If there’s another superintelligence in those bots, I’m in trouble.
I check the safety on the rifle and make sure it’s off, rack a round into the chamber. Almost boom time. The explosives will alert the bots, and that’s when phase two kicks into gear: figure out what to do next. I’ll have to trust in the Revv to keep me ahead of them. Consider it a trial run for Eka.
The house doors will be magnetically locked, so after the bots are neutralised. I’ll try to blow a window. If that doesn’t work, well—Cole is trapped up here with me. With the repeaters down he can’t call for help, unless he’s got an emergency transmission balloon, and I can pop that before it gets too high. I’ll get in eventually.
Two hours ago, I got a notice—the shyft had arrived at a drone drop near my apartment. It’s waiting for me. Cole’s pinged me twice, wondering where I am.
He’ll know soon enough.
The sun is well down and the air is starting to chill with stars when three sharp bangs hiss over the foothills’ sedimentary stone slabs. My cuff immediately reports a loss of signal and I pull it off and stow it in my pocket.
The link is down. Cole might have a landline back-up, but I wouldn’t expect it. He’s cut off.
Now for the bots.
They were on a circular patrol, moving in random patterns around the house. I don’t know how many Cole has in total, they all look identical—three or four I’d guess. They’ve made a few dozen passes now and they move quickly and nearly silently. Keeping out of sight wasn’t easy. I resorted to shadowing them while staying just outside their sensor range.
Before the explosive echoes have stopped, I hear a branch snap off to my left as one of the bots bee-lines toward the house at a gallop. They’ll be on Condition One now, closing to defend the house until an attack comes or the link returns.
The sky is clear and the moon just off full. I can see well enough, but not nearly as well as the bots will. I even things up with a pair of spekz I bought at one of the charge stops on the hop down here and a second after I put them on the silver moonlight forest snaps to garish false colour. Nothing as subtle as the Service nightshades--these are all fake greens and reds--but enough to make the bots stand out and help avoid the sun-bleached bones of fallen trees.
I would have preferred to approach quietly, get the chance to take one of the bots by surprise, even up the numbers a little, but I couldn’t risk an SOS with the link still up. Makes my job harder, but I won’t have to worry about sirens flying in from the city.
We’re all alone out here now. Me, the bots, and Cole.
I creep closer to the house, staying low, drawing cover behind the rough bark of the tall pines. Yellowed light spills out the massive windows and onto the scrub grass lawn. I come up from the side, southeast of the main entrance, moving silently, picking my footsteps around sticks and errant pinecones. This direction has the fewest windows, lets me hide in the deepest shadow.
The bots have tightened ranks near the house. I can see three of them from here, one at each corner. I assume there’s another around the other side too, next to the living room window. I’ll need to take them from a distance. The bots are armed, but if I ramp up the Revv and keep moving and stay mostly behind cover—and if they’re not AMPed—I’ll be able to neutralize them.
Hopefully.
I stalk up behind a pine, crouch around the trunk and aim down the rifle’s sights at the nearest bot. Two shots to start, take out the primary sensors if I can. The bot’s brains are protected in its chest so I can’t disable it entirely, but I can mess with its ability to aim.
I pull the trigger twice before the slight recoil can affect the aim and as the bullets are streaking towards the bot I start working on how to take out the others.
As I fall back, the bullets chew into the bot’s head. It reels in a strained whir and spins with its gun arm raising, but doesn’t return fire. I blinded it. The bots on the other corners will be triangulating the position of the shots and moving to intercept—this is where I find out if Cole has an AMP. If he does, I’ll be dead in the next five seconds.
I backtrack down the incline, away from the approaching bots, across the gravel roadway and put the square garage between us. An AMP would have calculated my position a half-second after I fired and shot me from the other side of the woods. I’m not dead, which means no AMP. This just might work.
Besides, if I can’t take out three more measly lawbots how will I ever beat Eka?
I park myself around the corner of the garage and catch my breath, steady my nerves. One of the bots was coming from the short side of the house and will be here in a second, give or take a few milliseconds. I’ll hit it twice in the head and once on the gun arm. If it keeps coming I’ll open up on it until it drops.
The Revv’s projections get hazy from there. Things depend on how durable the bot is, on which side of the garage the second bot makes its approach—if it does at all—and what the fourth bot is doing.
No point in getting too far ahead of myself. One crisis at a time.
The next bot rounds the corner, armgun and head at the same time, ready to take a shot the second it sees me. I prioritize the gun, hit it with a single bullet that knocks it askew and before it can p
ull its arm back to face me I notch my sights higher and shatter the bot’s sensors. It tries to swing back around and hit me from memory, but I keep firing, blast holes through its cranium until it’s twisting and loses balance and topples backwards over a fallen log.
It whirrs and tries to rise and I can’t hear anything else for all the noise it’s making, can’t tell which side of the garage the other bots coming from. I raise the assault rifle with my left arm and pull the Janus with my right, aim them down the walls and stand with my forehead at the corner of the garage and my eyes fixed straight ahead, watching both sides with my peripheral vision. If the bot doesn’t come in the next few seconds it’s playing tricky. I’ll back off and reposition, disappear into the dark, take it from another angle.
It bursts around the corner on my right three-quarters of a second later, moving full speed, trying to flank me. Bad luck for me—I’m left-handed and the pistol isn’t as powerful as the assault rifle—but I take a play from the cyphers in the AV yard and knock the bot’s foot out from under it the instant I see it. The bot swings off balance as it attempts to correct its fall, and fires wildly in my direction. I track the incoming bullets and duck as I drop the handgun, swing the assault rifle around and finish the clip into the bot’s torso. It hits the ground and doesn’t come up.
One left.
I retrieve the handgun and fade into the woods. The bots will have better night vision capabilities than I do, and likely infrared, but my reflexes are better. Way better.
It’s almost too easy.
So easy I get careless.
I sweep north away from the garage, circle west then back down toward the big corner glass windows and bright lights of the living room. As I get closer I’m able to see inside. The main room is set up like a medical clinic for a single patient. Medbots fuss over a withered man lying prone on a surgical bed.