MINDFRACK

by S G King

  Once located, he’d tell Turkey. Then Turkey would send someone to take him out. No coming back from that.

  Pic screwed his eyes up and farted. He’d nearly forgotten about Turkey such was his focus on his adversary.

  Turkey would be finding out about Crusoe soon, and he’d be forced to explain his failure to stop the other hacker, again. He writhed and twitched at the prospect and wondered how the dried-up old Texan would react. Not well, he thought.

  Not well at all.

  30

  Emmett had removed himself from his ranch house and stormed into a steel-walled barn, out of earshot of Jennifer. He howled and screamed profanities as he took a shovel off a wall hook and swung it violently, first at the horse tack hanging from the centre beam, as it was closest to him. He moved on to the stacked sacks of feed. He succeeded in breaking two of the bags before sinking to the ground, panting. Never had he lost his temper like this during all his years in the CIA.

  The horses nearest pawed at the ground while others bucked and banged their hooves on the barn wall. It was their distress that returned Emmett’s sanity. He walked over to the stalls and calmed them, rubbing their heads and apologising for his behaviour.

  He was furious that such a simple operation had resulted in the death of a top operative. Crusoe was irreplaceable. He was his friend, of sorts. How could this have happened?

  He wanted to blame Pic wholeheartedly. Wanted to put him down. It’d be so simple. Send the command to his leg bracelet. Or, more practically, send another operative to remove the boy with no fuss; it would have been Crusoe, he thought painfully. But where would that get him?

  He knew better.

  The boy had let him down, but, to be fair, there were other forces at work. Pic was the most infamous hacker there was, the best by a mile. CIA analytics had figured that, before Emmett had been tasked to find him.

  Yet this other hacker was running rings around him.

  Who in God’s name was he?

  31

  Despite her grief over Kath, Wanda had brought herself back to the present and was now engaged fully with their immediate problems, and even came up with a location they could hide out at. Logan felt uncomfortable with her suggestion but couldn’t come up with a viable alternative.

  To his relief she hadn’t blamed him for Kath’s death, at least not outwardly. Instead, she tasked him with the impossible, a guarantee that they wouldn’t be followed or ID’d this time.

  He instructed that they disable all Cloud connectivity and any tracker apps, social or otherwise, which meant no head-up maps, nor any information or assistance from their PAs, which felt disorienting; Wanda likened it to losing a natural sense. They found a stall selling mini 3V tourist maps, which they used to weave a random trail and avoid being tracked by the ubiquitous surveillance cams.

  It meant traversing underpasses frequented by the homeless, through derelict buildings where ghost-like addicts lived out their pointless existence, and through densely populated areas where they could immerse and lose themselves in a human ocean or two. Along the way they bought changes of clothes and a new rucksack from covered street stalls, using untraceable cash accounts stored on Wanda’s iTatt, while discarding the old ones.

  They came upon a themed avenue lined with morbidly obese people sitting on reinforced deckchairs outside brightly painted lock-ups, selling dubious five-minute iTatt jobs. This neighbourhood was prime badass, and it was here, in a connecting side street, that they were confronted by a gang of youths with external smartlenses that were rendered in opaque colours, turning their wearers into zombie kids. The skinny head honcho, with lots of bodymod, approached them, the centre of his lenses clearing. The black teen grinned widely to reveal teeth with iTatts that flickered into a moving banner of “f-u-c-k y-o-u”. He shrugged his arms and long blades were fed down from under his sleeves into his hands. He sauntered closer to face off Logan, and his lenses momentarily opaqued into a spiral pattern, a signal to the other gang members, who formed a loose circle cutting off any back-tracking.

  “Hand over that bag, motherfucker, and we might let you through – call it a tariff. Or you wanting on-point with me?” he said, pointing a blade at his puffed out chest. “I is rankin, one-oh-one gangsta in this hood.”

  Wanda moved behind Logan.

  “Look, kid, we don’t want any trouble – we’ve nothing of value, all right?”

  “Just give him what he wants,” whispered Wanda.

  “Shiiiiit, look like your woman know what best, cuntfucker.” The boy brought a knife up and held it in front of his mouth and licked it, his eyes lingering on Wanda. “Or maybe me and my soldiers have a little cunifun with your pussy there …”

  “All right, just take it – but we don’t have anything else. Now just get out of the way or I’ll call a blue drone over.” It was a bluff, since they couldn’t involve the police at any cost.

  “Ohhh, I’m freakin’ in my boots mister cuntfucker,” the boy said, theatrically shaking himself. Sniggers rippled through the other gang members. His smile slid from his face like butter off a hot knife. “Was being nice, motherfucking rich boy. No need get spazzed out. Tell you folk ain’t from here by way you move – and those fancy nanocuts.” He pushed the tip of a blade through his hair. “Hmph – I know you got iSense shit inside your eyes. But you can’t do this.” His external smartlenses opaqued and his eyes appeared to spin inside their sockets like slot machine reels. “Bet you have fancy iTatts too. Maybe carve them off you for trophies.” He skimmed a blade down an arm.

  Logan took a stronger stance. The teenagers weren’t big, but there were eight or nine of them and all were armed with knives of one kind or another. Not good odds and he and Wanda didn’t have a weapon between them, which now seemed beyond careless.

  As the gang leader took a step around Logan, there was a noise from a side alley. A big shape moved in its shadows; the glint of something long and metallic swept through the air and clanged against the side of a dumpster.

  The teenage gang, emboldened by their number, stood firm. The leader said, “The fuck you doin’ in there? Come out or fuck off.”

  “If I have to come out there, you’re going to regret it,” said the shadowy form. The voice resonated on the scale of a seismic event and Logan knew its owner. “Might skin you and eat you,” the voice added, menacingly. “Suggest you all leave … now.”

  The leader looked back to Logan. “Stay the fuck there.” He nodded at the others to watch them. He took a stride toward the alley. “Come the fuck out here and we’ll carve you up, fucking creep.” He held his knives up like a samurai and the other gang members did likewise. They looked like a formidable mini-army of assassins.

  There was a loud screech and the dumpster flew out of the alley and landed in front of them, breaking open with an almighty crash and scattering rubbish across the paving. Some of the gang members jumped back, shocked, but overall they stood firm. A deep guttural laugh pre-empted Leo’s emergence. He strode out and Logan’s jaw went slack. He’d heard him talk, back in the subway, and felt his oversized hands bearing down on him, but it hadn’t prepared him for the Xeno’s full presence. He must have been close to eight feet tall, but it was his build and girth that made Logan catch his breath: those arms were easily bigger than his thighs and the rest of him was equivalently proportioned; yet he was moving lithely, like an athlete. The sight was mesmerizing, and Logan felt the corners of his mouth lift. He had a pipe in his right hand – correction, it was a heavy scaffold pole, and he began to swing it around like a martial artist, causing a strange whirring sound as it cut through the air at an ever-increasing pace.

  As Leo moved toward the gang, they visibly shrank in stature, not believing what they were seeing. The leader, trying not to lose face, said, “Fuck you, freak. You lucky this time – you hear?” and made a signal for his gang members to fall back.

  Leo pressed his point home by taking a couple of strides and leaping forward so that he was amongst t
hem before they had moved. He brought the end of the scaffold pipe down in a flourish and so swiftly that it cracked the paving. He batted the knives from the leader and picked him up with his free hand as though he weighed nothing. “Suggest you tell your friends to leave now, little rat.”

  Leo opened his mouth to show his teeth, and Logan saw the gang leader’s pants darken. The other members didn’t need telling: they were already scattering like vermin.

  Leo dropped the gang leader and he scurried away while struggling to get to his feet. The Xeno giant bellowed after them, “These are my friends – so you leave alone, or I’ll come for you … in the night ...” Then he promptly walked back into the alley, as though uncomfortable with his exposure in the street.

  “Hey, wait! Where you going? Can we talk?” Logan shouted after him.

  Leo shrugged a shoulder in response and disappeared into the shadows.

  “You know him?” asked Wanda, her voice tight.

  “Sort of. He’s a Xeno. Leo’s his name. Impressive, isn’t he.”

  Wanda nodded.

  “Why now …?” Logan wondered aloud.

  “Xenos are weird and unpredictable?”

  “And how is it that people always seem to know where we are,” he protested, looking up; there were only a few drones drifting about, mostly delivery types.

  “No idea, but can we please get back onto the main road before anyone else turns up?”

  “Agreed. Guess we have no option but to keep going.”

  Thirty minutes on and they walked out onto a teeming sidewalk, towards the southern end of Canal Street. From there Wanda knew exactly where they were going and led them northward for a couple of blocks before stopping at a corner stall selling hats and fake designer bags.

  “Are we good now?” she said, pretending to examine a small red leather “Prada” handbag.

  “I’m sure as I can be. Let’s cross here – and keep your hood down.” Logan was looking dubiously at a large neon arch that bridged part of an extended paved area about fifty yards away.

  As they traversed the gridlocked traffic toward their destination Logan noticed that the arch really was neon lit, having an iconic flicker. He should have felt relieved at reaching sanctuary, but knowing that this was an entrance to one of the largest linked underground Xeno communes in New York, he was, instead, filled with foreboding.

  32

  Logan and Wanda stepped through the neon arch and trotted down the steps.

  This particular underground Xeno “village” was known as “Bowery” as it was linked through to Bowery Station via Canal’s disused platforms.

  There were oddities aplenty, entering and leaving the commune, and Logan tried not to stare though they were the ones that were being stared at since they looked vanilla by comparison, making them the abnormal.

  They continued their descent and arrived at the back of a small queue. At the front there were Xeno security guards scanning iTatts for Xeno IDs. Wanda had a word with one of them and they were taken to one side.

  After a short wait they were admitted and led through a series of passageways to a quieter, dimly lit area; it was a dead end, which made Logan feel vulnerable and trapped though he was too tired to complain. Wooden benches lined the walls, so they sat down and rested as best they could. Wanda brought out a water bottle to share.

  Wanda had explained on the way that she’d been here a couple of times, but only to the commune “fringe” where they would likely be holing-up tonight. Her link to this culture was via Kath, who was something of a legend amongst the community members. She was known for her award-winning art and would often close the iTatt shop and spend days mixing with the Xenos down in the commune and give a few of them some unique iTatts.

  Wanda told him that Bowery was one of the larger underground commune villages and that all were based around disused subway stations. Historically, it was a mutually satisfactory way of getting the Xenos off the city streets, where trouble followed them.

  Every so often, and on pre-arrangement with the Bowery Commune Council, NYPD would send down a couple of Johnny-friendlies, strictly non-com types. No 3V cams or any other visual recording device were permitted, as per the agreement. The polibots did bring down the equivalent of forensic scanner drones that buzzed around randomly, seeking out anything that could be perceived as harmful to the public above. Of prime concern were the tools of terrorism like explosives or biological weapons. As regards other substances, the authorities didn’t give a rat’s dropping. To a large degree, then, the residents enjoyed immunity from the civil laws above, but that was not an excuse for anarchy. If any serious crime came to the attention of the authorities, then the City–Commune contracts would be dissolved until such time that the incident was resolved. So, as Wanda had put it, it was in everyone’s best interest that the community kept their shit in line – and that the City above respected them and left them alone.

  After about twenty, edgy minutes Logan heard footsteps and an odd, regular click or scuff. For a moment he feared they might have been followed into the commune by a polibot. He reached out and shook Wanda’s shoulder. She looked up at him, her eyes taking a time to register as she had fallen into a disturbed sleep. He put his finger to his lips and pointed to the passageway. To Logan’s surprise, Wanda relaxed and smiled.

  “Wanda? It’s me, Ssshala.”

  The owner of the voice appeared, along with her scales, claws, tail and all. Despite the shock of her alien-like appearance, he found himself relieved to see a face he recognised. He looked beyond her. No Button-eyes or Leo. Shala was alone.

  “Shala, you’re looking great,” said Wanda. She was standing now and seemed to have perked up.

  “I’m deeply sorry about Kath,” Shala said. They hugged, Shala being careful with the claws; Logan assumed they were fake since he had no recollection of them at the SOC when she took his hand.

  He was uncertain how to react, since part of him was angered by what Shala had done to him. It had possibly brought him to this point. Maybe if she hadn’t influenced him, he’d be across the other side of the city at this very moment being satisfyingly mindless and playing 3V-skee-ball with his drinking buddies. He kept quiet for Wanda.

  Shala let go of Wanda and turned to him. Extending her hand, she said, “Thisss is unexpected, Mark – seeing you here.” She lowered her brow at him and he felt a warmth growing in the front of his head.

  “Wait – stop that!”

  Shala retracted her hand. “I am not doing anything,” she said, defensively. “I am jussst trying to underssstand. I sense your enmity towards me. I’m truly sorry if you feel that I am the cause of your troubles. But know thisss. You have acted on your own instincts. I can’t change your true nature. You made the decisions on your own and you made them because you are a good person.”

  “Then what did you do to me?”

  “Very little. Planted a seed.”

  Was she down playing her abilities to make him trust her? He glanced to Wanda. She pleaded with her eyes at him to get along with Shala. “All right … Just – no more tricks.”

  “Of course.”

  “Are we good?” asked Wanda.

  “We’re good,” said Logan, and wishing to make things right, as much as anything for her, he held out his hand to Shala.

  The scales were cool to the touch. “Good to meet you again, Shala. Is that your full name?” It was something to say.

  She gave a brief hiss-chuckle. “Yes, jussst Ssshala.” She swished her tail, before growing serious again.

  Logan learned more about Shala later, from Wanda. It turned out she was a second-generation, gene modified “neutrois”, or in layman’s terms, someone who had no reproductive parts. Paradoxically, Shala oozed sex appeal, especially in the way she moved; it was as though every muscle and sinew were synchronised to an internal melody, like that between a snake and its charmer’s flute. To his amazement the scales were real, not an iTatt effect. They covered every inch of her body. He kne
w this as she preferred to walk around naked, barring her calf boots with claws – hence the clicking – which he understood were her own retractable nails poking out. And she wore a thong, but no bra, though she had small breasts and no nipples, just scales. The covering of those iridescent scales, he considered, was the most extraordinary part of her, not least because they were linked into her iCBC so she could alter her colours at will like a chameleon.

  Logan had no idea how she used seating, given the tail; but then again he couldn’t see her in a nine to five, struggling with office chair levers.

  Shala led them through a labyrinth of walkways and tunnels, recognisable by the engineering and retained décor of the old subway systems. They passed a menagerie of forms. Most were covered extensively in iTatts and had physical modifications, although none as extreme as Shala. They seemed to hold her in high regard, most stepping aside while some even nodded with reverence.

  The lighting within the connecting areas was mostly subdued since City Hall had put a cap on electricity usage down here. It was free, after all, as per the original agreement. It brightened when they came upon an expansive mix of dwellings, bars, shops and other, unrecognisable structures, all meshed together in a diverse matrix of Xeno architecture.

  The village area was noisy. People talking, kids playing. Music seeped out of the bars. It could have been a scene from another planet. Logan reminded himself that these were people – a strange bunch, yes, but like him beneath their bizarre bodymod. He wondered what their day-to-day concerns were and what sort of routine they had.

  Shala directed them into a compact shop-cum-dwelling and showed them their makeshift residence at the back, which was basically a storage room with a sink and toilet. Not the Hilton, but in their present state of mind it could well have been. The vacant shop was on the “fringe” of the underground commune and they were advised not to venture in any further as not all of the Xeno dwellers were so accommodating.