MINDFRACK

by S G King

  “I’m onto it.” Diaz melted away.

  Logan scanned through his texts and messages before dropping back on the sofa, and tried to think about what he needed to do before his colleagues turned up and unceremoniously carted him into work. He was so engrossed he barely noticed iSense alerting him to another call. He didn’t check the caller, thinking it was Diaz calling him back.

  “You are in danger ...”

  “Uh-oh – Salvatore, my friend.”

  “Mark Logan, you must leave your apartment now. You are in danger.”

  “Now hold on for a second. I took on board everything you told me yesterday, but here I am, safe and sound. I’m sure you –”

  “You must leave now, they are almost there.”

  “But it’s the police coming to pick me up – hey, how did you know that?”

  “I can’t stop the polibot. It has been instructed to use force. Its firewall has been compromised.”

  “That’s not funny. Stop messing with me,” said Logan. Then something clicked in his sore head. Why did Dorsey question where he was? He’d left his iTatt NYPD tracker app on, as they’d requested. Dorsey would have known where he was during the call, no question, and he wasn’t one for small talk unless there was an angle.

  “You are in great danger. Please believe me. You must leave now. Hurry.”

  “What does the polibot want?”

  “It wants to take you somewhere.”

  “Where? Why?”

  “I’m not sure. I think to question you.”

  Logan hesitated. “How do you know?”

  “Hurry. It will use force,” added Salvatore.

  Unconvinced, but covering his options, Logan began pacing around the lounge considering what he should take if he fled. Salvatore warned him again, his voice faint as he’d lowered the volume down in his buds so he could think better.

  He decided to check out the patrol car before he did anything rash. If the polibot was with an officer, and they were all business-like, then he would give the situation another chance.

  He went to the window. Couldn’t see the car yet. Decided to open it so he could hear it drive up. Turned back to his apartment. It wasn’t big, just a typical condo-style, one-bedroom unit, with all the trappings of a professional income. He visited the kitchen and then the bathroom, filling his pockets with anything that looked useful. The selection process felt random. Grabbed a rucksack and began stuffing that as well. Opened a draw and grabbed his stash of nanos and threw them into the bag.

  He would feel foolish and have a laugh at hauling all this into the station later, he told himself. Better hide the nanos, though; what if they searched his bag? Maybe he should leave them behind.

  A siren-blip from the street. Shit … they’re here.

  At the window again, a seam of ice reached up his spine as he viewed the patrol car; he wasn’t sure why, until he used iSense to zoom into the car’s front screen. The police officer was motionless. Something was wrong. The polibot slunk out of the patrol car in a single fluid movement and headed towards Logan’s apartment block at a fast walking pace. It was holding a puncher, a close proximity delivery system for an electric “air bolt”; it was usually used as a pacifier but was potentially lethal. Now he was convinced.

  No time to alert Ops.

  Think, dammit.

  Turning off his tracker, he made for the door, ensuring that it shut behind him. He had a vague recollection from his police civi-induction that the polibot would be coming up the stairs since in these types of small condos it could move faster doing that than waiting for the elevator. The condo was only nine floors high and Logan was on the fourth floor. He reckoned on the polibot reaching his level, and his door, in about twenty seconds. He ran for the elevators.

  There were two elevators and one was out of commission. Logan hammered the down button knowing he was almost out of time. The elevator display went into slow motion. It pinged and the doors parted. No polibot, thank God. He jumped in and was again hammering the buttons.

  Ground and doors …

  Ground and doors!

  Shut the damn doors!

  They moved like they had all the time in the world.

  Logan’s apartment was around the corner, out of sight, but too close. He heard the Johnny-friendly voice asking him to come to the door. A couple of seconds later he heard an almighty bang together with the splintering and shearing of wood and metal. So much for the reinforced entrance.

  The doors closed and the elevator descended at its usual relaxed speed.

  The polibot was clever, and faster than a gazelle. It would quickly check the elevator and would immediately head back down the stairs. He didn’t have a chance.

  “I can help.” The voice was diminutive and distant. Logan iSense’d the volume up and brought Salvatore back into his world.

  “What do you mean – how?”

  “I can help you get away from the polibot.”

  “Just do it!”

  He had no idea what Salvatore could see, or how he could know where he was, or where the polibot was for that matter, but right now he’d take anything the voice in his head had to offer; his options had run out.

  The elevator came to a halt and began to ascend.

  “Hey!” Logan shouted. “Is that you, Salvatore?”

  “I have changed the direction of the elevator car.”

  Logan’s eyes widened. How did he do that? “All right … what do I do now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Dammit, Salvatore, we need to do better than that. The polibot isn’t stupid. It will have registered the fact that I’m on the way back up and it will be moving faster than this car.”

  As if to verify his worst fears, the car was moving back past the fourth floor when he heard the thunder of heavy feet approach, followed by an almighty clang of something battering against the doors. It sounded like the polibot was trying to force the outer doors open, but they held. As the lift continued to ascend, he could hear the bot running off. No doubt heading upwards as well.

  “Salvatore!”

  The elevator lurched and changed direction again.

  He had no idea what was going on outside. What if the polibot had tricked him and was still on his floor? What if it had managed to open the outer doors and could stop and reach into the elevator there? Logan shrank into the back of the car.

  The car was now picking up speed noticeably.

  “Are you making the elevator go faster?”

  “Yes, please brace yourself.”

  Logan’s eyes were glued to the display. The ground floor was coming up way too quick. There were screeching noises outside the metal walls and he assumed the emergency brakes had been activated. The car juddered to a stop, while the doors made repetitive movements before they bounced open, allowing him to jump out.

  Logan looked about wildly and failed to understand why the polibot wasn’t there to greet him in the lobby. “Where is it?” he gasped as he headed out through the condo’s entrance doors.

  “It is heading towards the ninth floor.”

  “What? How did that happen? It would have known I was on the way down.”

  “I made the external display show the elevator going up.”

  “Now that’s clever,” said Logan, trotting down the steps to the sidewalk.

  “Wait, I think –”

  As he reached the kerb he heard the unmistakeable sound of shattering glass. He glanced up over his shoulder and caught sight of the polibot in free fall, feet first, its head tucked into its chest and its arms held out for balance, a shroud of glass fragments caught in its wake like the trailing feathers of an airborne raptor. It had jumped clean through a stairwell window on the sixth floor. It landed on a bed of decorative plants with a deep thud, penetrating it up to its knees. The robot’s upper body jackknifed and rebounded off the wood retaining wall which splintered and collapsed.

  Shards of glass struck the polibot and peppered the ground around it. It
appeared stunned as it was now motionless, except for sporadic twitching of its torso and arms.

  Logan found himself rooted to the spot, as though his own legs were imbedded in the concrete below him. He had little doubt that the robot would reinitialize its body in seconds and he would be unable to outrun or lose it, even with a fifty-yard start.

  “Mark. Mark …”

  “What do I –”

  “Cross the road and wait there. Do as I say …”

  Logan trotted to the other side of the road, twisting around as he went, checking on the polibot. As he reached the opposite kerb, the robot began to straighten up. “Shit – what now?”

  “Wait. Don’t move.”

  “Hell I won’t. I need to run, now!”

  “No. Stay where you are. It will walk to you, if you do not run. Trust me.”

  Logan knew instinctively that the polibot would not have endangered itself by jumping from such a height. There would have been other options; standard protocol in such situations of police pursuit. At the very least it would have messaged its handler in the patrol car. Or invoked a blue drone to follow its fleeing suspect. Logan knew beyond doubt that Salvatore had been right about the breach of the polibot’s firewall. It was being controlled, puppet like, which meant it could be capable of doing anything to him.

  The lanky robot pulled itself out of the flowerbed, its NYPD coloured coded panels scratched and dented, and its legs muddied, though its Johnny-friendly face was unscathed. It locked its gaze on Logan as it made its way to the kerb, its puncher raised.

  “Salvatore …?”

  The polibot picked up its pace as it walked into the road.

  The geometry of Logan’s world had shrunk to a corridor between them, his senses muted except to the sound of blood galloping through his veins.

  Ten yards …, five yards …

  And then, in the blink of an eye, the robot was gone.

  Logan’s hearing caught up and informed him of the explosive crunch of metal and composites underlaid by the race of tyres against blacktop.

  It was an automated delivery lorry, travelling way above the speed limit for this urban road. And there was no warning or evasive action. It hurtled on, taking its mechanised roadkill with it.

  Stunned, Logan stared after the lorry. Conceding weakly, he said, “That was you wasn’t it – again …”

  “Yes. Now you must move. I think the polibot has been incapacitated, but you had better go.”

  “I don’t need telling twice, Salvatore, and I definitely owe you a beer …”

  Logan approached the patrol car and snatched a glimpse into the front as he hurried past. Any trace of edgy humour was instantly wiped from his face. It didn’t take a forensic scientist to recognise that the police officer was dead. His eyes were open but unnaturally wide, like he’d been frozen in permanent shock, and there was blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. He didn’t know how the officer had died as he couldn’t see any evidence of physical trauma. Polibots were immensely strong and fast so there would have been many options.

  Salvatore’s voice broke through his deliberation. “Someone has alerted Police Operations. More polibots are on their way – I’m not sure whether they have been compromised too. And blue drones will be arriving shortly.”

  He needed to move fast but scrapped his idea of getting himself to a police station. Right now, he could only think of one place that would be a safe haven. No one knew about it, except for Diaz, and it certainly wasn’t mentioned anywhere on his social media.

  Logan pulled his hood up, picked up his pace and walked at speed through an alley he knew would lead into the adjacent block. It was a shortcut he regularly used to shave off minutes to the subway.

  From there it was a couple of changes and a short walk to the iTatt shop.

  27

  Emmett lit up his slim and iSense’d Pic.

  Before he finished drawing on his cigar, the sun-starved, mobile face of Pic greeted him. Nervy as a whore in a church, Emmett thought, trying to look past the restless expressions.

  “Boy, tell me what went wrong.”

  “Fuck me, I-I did everything right, I made the Dorsey avatar tell him to wait, I swear, I swear ...” Pic was looking blankly into space since Emmett hadn’t launched his selfie-cam.

  “Then what happened?”

  “Clusterfuck, that’s what. The polibot should have caught him – caught him easily. Got himself a blackhat asswad – messed it all up. Fuck. Shit, oops, sorry, sir.” Pic belch-talked the profanities.

  “I’m beginning to lose my patience, boy. Switch on your impediment app, I can’t take your weird shit right now. Now tell me, how’d the fuck-up happen?”

  “He’s good. But not as good as me – caught me off guard. Didn’t see that lorry coming – it was way too fast.” Pic’s speech impediment app slowed his replies and made them more intelligible, though it occasionally diluted their meaning. A price Emmett was willing to pay this hour.

  “You telling me the detective is better than you?”

  “No. No. Not him. He had help. The other hacker warned him and –”

  “What you talking about? There’s someone else like you out there? And he’s helping Logan? Is it that Diaz girl who he works with?”

  Pic laughed. “What? Oh, no, she’s nowhere near that clever. This is another five-star blackhat genius. Like me. Has to be, to do what he did.”

  “Jesus F. Christ, boy, now you telling me I got something else to deal with?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. You better than him?”

  “I’m shit-hot – no one’s as good as me.”

  “Well, that’s your opinion.”

  “No, no. But it’s ...” Pic hesitated.

  “What’s wrong? There’s more you need to tell me?”

  “There’s no fucking way such a hacker could exist without any of us knowing.”

  “Us?”

  “Blackhat community. We have rankings.”

  “You supposed to be a secret, boy. You know that.”

  “I am a secret. It’s only on the Dark Cloud and for gaming rankings. No one knows who I am. I’m an avatar – anonymous, but registered – he isn’t …”

  “All right. Let me think a minute.” Emmett chewed faster on his slim. “You can find this other hacker?”

  “Fuck yes. When he shows his sorry ass again, I’ll be ready. Grab his e-signature. Then I’ll send my sniffers and hunters off. They’ll report back to me. Everything about him.”

  “Can you stop him next time? Wait …” Emmett held his hand up. He was always on the lookout for new talent to add to his portfolio of operatives. Young computer hackers were always the easiest to control. “Forget that – can you find exactly where he is?”

  “Said that. When he tries anything again, I’ll be ready. I can pin his avatar to a V-wall. Corrupt his media links, just long enough for my sniffer to trace his IP, all the way back. Then I’ll use –”

  “Spare me the technicalities, boy. Will it tell us where he lives, in the real world?”

  “Pissing’s easier. You can kill him then, Turkey.”

  Emmett scowled. “Did you just call me Turkey?”

  “What? – no – must be the app.”

  “All right, just get his name and address – then leave him to me. You clear on that?”

  Pic nodded enthusiastically.

  “But first we need to find Logan. That takes priority.”

  “I can find him too.”

  “Good. Now, how did the polibot kill the patrolman in the car – exactly?”

  “I told it to poke him in the throat, with its finger. Smashed his larynx.”

  “In that case make it look like Logan reached in and hit him instead – while the polibot was in the building making a routine check on Logan in his apartment.”

  “But it’ll be from the wrong side. He’d need to be in the passenger seat.”

  “Doesn’t matter, I just need him registered as a
criminal – and to run. When you find out where he is, we can pick him up first, before the police get to him. Yes?”

  “Yes, I can do that.”

  “Make sure you catch it on all the cams. Patrol-car internals, any third-party cams. You got that?”

  “Yes, I can do that. Should be easy.” Pic sounded excited.

  “If we’re lucky he might lead us directly to that sexbot. In any case, he’s got to come up for air. And when he does, this time I’ll send someone in to deal with him and retrieve the playmate. But no polibots, you understand …?”

  “Find Logan, no polibots. Find the hacker’s name, address, report to you.”

  “Good. Sounds like we’re clear. Go get them, boy, and I’ll reward you. Give you some more equipment – top of the range stuff.”

  Pic perked up and shifted in his seat. “I won’t let you down, boss.”

  28

  Evening had descended by the time Logan arrived at the Moana Lisa, and light was fading fast. The timing was deliberate, as scattered shadows and reflections were smeared across wet pavements like an impressionist painting. Surveillance cams would be working overtime to make sense out of anything that moved.

  Logan pulled his hood back, brushed the rainwater from his arms and pushed into the iTatt shop. The door alerted Kath and she came out from behind her cubicle. He said, “Hi,” and glanced past her, looking hopeful.

  She nodded and flicked her head to the back of the shop.

  He walked straight through into Wanda’s workshop without knocking, as he was in no mood for manners.

  Wanda was sitting at a workbench, a large 3V projected in front of her. The holographic image looked like one of those 3D abstract art forms, all spaghetti and cobwebs in myriad colours and shades. He knew it was a representation of the inner workings of a 6thgen brain.