Gone Dark (The Stefan Mendoza Trilogy Book 2)

by P. R. Adams

  My stomach knotted up. For Abhishek to give something away, things must have been more hopeless than I realized.

  Chapter 27

  Chan’s office was darker than before, the LED trim from the eggshell chairs dimmer. Somehow the light, citrusy perfume Chan had taken to in the real world had crept into the VR world, drifting off Avatar-Chan. It was even more real than the less pleasant smells filling the back of the van where I sat with Chan and Ichi.

  Avatar-Ichi paced the office, dressed in an outfit that was all video game fantasy warrior—armored shoulder and hip pads, metallic gauntlets, and not a lot else. The avatar’s body was pure Ichi, but then why wouldn’t it be? She was more than the ideal of those fantasy games. Since my avatar was a younger version of me wearing a skintight black shirt that was no more effective a defense than Avatar-Ichi’s outfit, I had no room to comment on it.

  Chan’s avatar, however, who took the prize. The hoodie was gone, as were the facial tattoos. The black T-shirt was nowhere near as baggy, in fact almost tight, and it was knotted just above a pierced bellybutton. Even the signature black jeans were now hip-riders, despite there not being much hip to ride. And as Avatar-Chan tapped at an idealized computing device that glowed bright green, the hair that had been kept under control before, now spilled over shoulders and collarbone.

  A display slid up from the desk in front of me and flashed a message: Honeypot lure ready.

  I glanced at Chan, who had straightened as much as the eggshell chair would allow. “Are you?” I asked. Those magenta eyes reflected confusion. “For this. For Jacinto.”

  Chan sucked in a deep, slow breath, then nodded.

  The wall to our right disintegrated and the space resolved into a bright green grid. Jacinto’s Gridhound metaphor for defining the VR world, not Chan’s. The recognizable icons popped up: cylindrical manila data stores, angry red security access cubes, circular magenta Grid relays. And then a new one took shape: a rectangle—a bed—with white covering.

  The honeypot.

  Avatar-Chan’s head bowed, then with a flick of a dainty wrist, the first file went into the honeypot storage. I caught a bloody face—heart-shaped, with soft features, a small mouth with puffy bottom lip, frizzy black hair and faintly mocha skin, terrified brown eyes—then looked away.

  I had seen the first few minutes of the video when Chan had purchased it. There was no need to see any more of it.

  Ever.

  Jacinto should have been alive. There were some things I wanted to do to him. The real him. Some things that would have made him wish for death.

  Another file flew out. Then another. They were what Chan had described as premium. People paid to have them produced, selected the victims from image catalogs, provided the scenarios—settings, the types of assault, sometimes the exact sorts of noises they wanted.

  And the endings.

  One of the victims had been a kid, not even a teen.

  Avatar-Chan’s fingers shook as they hovered over the computing device. “Word’s going out. Whispers. Jacinto knew people. These videos…there’ll be an auction. Just a minute of preview. Like…they can’t resist.”

  It wasn’t one man’s sickness. With more than eight billion people infesting the flesh of the planet, there had to be an expectation of some perversions. How many was Chan talking about?

  The image on my display shifted, taking on depth, resolving into sharp angles, geometric shapes. Seats. A podium on a raised platform. A stand with wares on display: cubes with images from the videos.

  Auction house.

  Avatar-Chan grunted as a black-suited man strode into the space beside the platform. The man was graceful, slender, with a receding hairline—greased, red. His face was bathed in shadow, no matter where he moved to or how he turned.

  “Auctioneer.” Avatar-Chan’s eyes closed.

  Avatar-Ichi strolled to my side and bent down. So close, I should have been able to smell the ointments and medicines covering her skin. The bruising should have stood out as a painful reminder of my responsibility for her well-being. But her flesh was immaculate, and there wasn’t even a hint of any scent—leather, metal. Nothing. She was like me, an intruder in the VR space, not someone good enough at it to pull off virtual scents.

  I looked closer at her flesh, almost touched it. “Is this a scan?”

  She shrugged. “I would practice in VR. For me, it had to feel real.”

  The honeypot items pressed against my thoughts. “It looks like fetish porn. Like a video game.”

  Her eyes squinted. Furious. I’d gone too far. Maybe I sounded like her parents.

  I turned back to the auction room and whispered. “Sorry.”

  She pointed at the people appearing in the chairs, all of them with similarly darkened faces. There were six—five men and a woman. The forms gave off a sense of fairly realistic avatars rather than idealized ones, possibly scanned, like Ichi’s. Shrouded in shadows or not, the men seemed to be consistently middle-aged, possibly older. I caught paunches beneath sweaters, turkey necks rising from collars, the beginnings of sag in posture and stiffness in movement. One of them was even missing an arm at the elbow. The woman seemed about the same age, but I thought I could make out enough of her hair to see styling that spoke of money and vanity.

  Avatar-Ichi turned to examine another man as he appeared in a chair near the back. A big man, maybe a former bodybuilder. “These are the buyers?”

  Avatar-Chan whispered, “Yes.”

  “You can find them?” Avatar-Ichi’s voice was tense, furious.

  I held a finger up. “We’re after Jacinto.”

  Avatar-Ichi’s lips twisted. “They are animals.”

  “And they’re hidden behind security to match anything we can manage. If we go after them, we lose our chance to go after Jacinto. Which would you rather see, a murderous AI responsible for who knows how many deaths shut down, or a bunch of sick bastards who buy aftermarket torture-snuff?”

  She stiffened. “Both would be what I prefer.”

  “We don’t have the resources.”

  A gavel rapped: distant, hollow. The auctioneer set it down on the podium and said, “We have three items for review.” New Englander. Not blue-collar Bostonian, but somewhere with money, sophistication. “This will be a silent bid process. You may evaluate the previews now for content and quality.”

  The bidders lowered their heads. There were eight male avatars now, and two females; the new woman looked like she’d just come off the plastic surgeon table, with an outrageous bust and a smooth neck that didn’t match the flesh of her cleavage.

  Viewing. Living out the pain being inflicted on the innocents.

  Avatar-Ichi thumbed the hilt of the samurai sword on her hip. “Can they see us?”

  Avatar-Chan’s head shook. “Virtual viewing theater. Anonymous sellers.”

  Like the buyers. And none of them looked like our little psycho AI.

  Plastic Surgery Woman faded out. Not to her taste? Missing Arm faded out next. Were they sensing a trap? Avatar-Chan seemed completely unconcerned.

  The Auctioneer cleared his throat. He sounded almost pleased when he said, “We have five bids.”

  The female avatar raised her head and searched around. “Are there more to preview?”

  Avatar-Chan flicked three more files toward the Auctioneer’s table, and three more cubes formed. The child’s face was on one of them. My avatar’s teeth ground together.

  Once again, heads went down.

  Avatar-Chan leaned forward. “Not coming.”

  The avatar near the back of the room faded out.

  Sweat trickled down my avatar’s cheeks. And mine. That was my doing, my experience of the stress and imagining the heat in our little office. “Is there something wrong? Why are they all fading away?”

  Avatar-Chan waved me down. “Normal. Bidding is usually between three or four. Five is good.”

  “But there were ten!”

  “Some read the descriptions, show up
to see the previews, leave. Big tits? Shows up all the time. Creams panties, leaves. Some don’t know who they are, what they want. Others—private investigators, cops. Get weeded out. Privacy software.”

  Another of the men faded out.

  Panic threatened the real me. “These are Jacinto’s thing, right? What he runs off of?”

  Avatar-Chan’s eyes closed. “He suspects.”

  “You said this kind of thing happens all the time, that he had a library.”

  “Needs something…precious.” Avatar-Chan’s voice cracked at that. Tears formed in the dark of magenta eyes as hands swiped and tapped the computing device.

  “What are you doing?”

  Another of the bidders faded. The plan seemed ready to fall apart, and we were out of resources to pursue another one. Avatar-Ichi paced behind me, frantic, furious. She needed some release. She apparently wasn’t troubled by the killing we did, killing of bad people. But killing innocents? Innocent women?

  She has a good heart, Norimitsu. You should be proud.

  Videos popped up on Chan’s display. Videos of a young body tied by bright red ropes to an old, four-poster bed of some dark-stained wood. The body was face down on rich, eggshell-colored sheets. Black hair, cut short. Arms that lacked any definition, any muscle at all, strained. The headboard rattled, a muffled scream slipped out, and the upper body turned, revealing a chest—bloody, red, and bruised. Tears from dark eyes not yet dyed magenta slicked across soft cheeks not yet tattooed, staining the sheets.

  And Jacinto stepped into the image, wearing the same studded, black leather pants and suspenders he had worn in our first meeting in VR. Not just for his avatar, then.

  Avatar-Chan’s hand shook, then flicked the video toward the Auctioneer.

  “Another preview is now available,” he said. Joyful.

  The woman looked up. “This preview wasn’t in the description.”

  Two more of the bidders looked up. A third asked, “Does this change the bidding requirements?”

  The Auctioneer glanced up, and Avatar-Chan tapped an answer to a query that appeared on the display: No change, bonus material.

  The bidders turned their attention to this new preview.

  Avatar-Chan curled inside the eggshell chair, pulling the pillow tight.

  I dropped to a knee beside the chair, took a quivering hand, unconcerned with my own rules about letting people work things out on their own. “Chan, you don’t have to do this. You—”

  “What he did—” Avatar-Chan pounded a fist against the same breasts that had been brutalized by Jacinto. The avatar’s breath was hot, the tears and saliva as real as any I had felt. “Can’t escape.” Avatar-Chan pulled me against that chest with a strength that could only come from desperation and the power of the Grid. “Can’t escape, Stefan. Ever.” A heart pounded in the narrow chest. Panicked, terrified.

  A scraping sound from behind me, a gasp, and Avatar-Chan released the vice-like grip.

  Avatar-Ichi pointed at the display in front of my chair, mouth open. “That is him?”

  Avatar-Jacinto, dressed in the same ridiculous studded leather suspenders and jacket ensemble, sat in the back row. His arms were thrown over the chairs on either side of him. His eyes were closed, and he seemed to be breathing in an aroma like someone seated before a banquet prepared by a masterful chef.

  I pulled away from Avatar-Chan, slowly until I was sure that was all right, then quickly stood. “Does he know? Is that mockery on his face, like he’s somehow figured this out? Chan?”

  “No.” A whisper from Avatar-Chan’s trembling lips. “Real. Can’t escape it, either.”

  The five other bidders remained, focusing on the previews for a few more minutes, then entering starting bids. The Auctioneer broke out the lot and set the order for the bidding process. Avatar-Jacinto didn’t move while the other files were bid on.

  I wanted to charge into the auction room, grab him by his jacket, and test my cybernetics against his imaginary form. Could I push my avatar to match my real-world potential? Would that be enough against someone who piloted androids that had proven too much for me, someone with probably unlimited resources at his disposal? Would there be any value to such an attack in this virtual realm? Unlike when he’d taken over our VR session, I don’t think I could really hurt him in any capacity.

  Avatar-Chan tugged on my arm and shook a tear-damp head. “Wait.”

  The bidders faded until there was Jacinto, the woman, and a man. Avatar-Chan stayed busy transferring the purchased files to the auction house to transfer. At least we were making some money back. Dirty money. Not something I could keep.

  Finally, the Auctioneer offered up Chan’s file.

  Jacinto raised a hand. “I will purchase this file, and no one else may have it. Your names, a trail of all that you did to come here for this, I can make it all available to your local law enforcement. Brenda. Shelby.”

  The other two bidders straightened, then faded out.

  The Auctioneer drew up to his meager full height. “Excuse me, but I am going to have to ask—”

  Jacinto waved, and the Auctioneer faded out with a shriek cut short. Jacinto jumped to his feet and shouted, “Chan!”

  Avatar-Chan gasped and fell back in the chair.

  I pointed Avatar-Ichi to a position off to my left, the best place to attack from if Jacinto came at us. “Chan, can he see us?”

  Avatar-Chan’s magenta eyes danced around, searching. “Not yet.”

  Jacinto strode to the cube sitting on the table. He ran fingers along the cube’s surface, bringing the video to life, showing Chan being flipped onto a back that was bright red and streaked with blood. Chan’s eyes were half-lidded, barely conscious. “I want all of them. Everything you took from me. Name your price.”

  Avatar-Chan typed into the computing device: These are mine. You don’t deserve them.

  It was more indirect—going through dozens and dozens of networks—more secure.

  Jacinto seemed to receive it immediately. “You’re broke. You’ve been spending money—very smart, very hard to track, but I have tracked you. And I will have you again. You’ll be in here with me forever, like the others.”

  His chimera, his snowcrash. Could an AI bluff? Could he really come for Chan somehow? “Offer him just that one file.” I hated myself for saying it, but we all knew what was at stake.

  Avatar-Chan swiped through several files. “One million. For the file.”

  Jacinto laughed. “You were a good memory, but not that good. I can stay satisfied off what you just sold those fools.” He caressed the cube. “Fifty thousand.”

  “One million. For all the files. Still have your favorite.”

  Jacinto once more closed his eyes and sniffed at the air. “All right. They have so many payments flying around, they will never see it.”

  They. The Agency? Cytek?

  He waved impatiently, as if we were right in front of him and he wanted us to come forward.

  Avatar-Chan brought the other files up—puffy faced, blue lips, tongue hanging out. Images that made me tremble with rage. Avatar-Chan whimpered. Tears dropped onto the computing device’s glass face.

  I put a hand on a shaking shoulder. “You don’t have—”

  A flick, and the files were gone.

  Avatar-Chan squeezed my hand. “Promise me.”

  “Trust me, he was dead when he tried to kill me. He’s twice as dead now.”

  Chapter 28

  Insect chatter was a constant noise in the dark of the woods where our van was parked. The rear door was cool and hard against my back. A sickly green glow from display devices was the only light within. With four of us stuffed so close together on the uncomfortable benches at the rear, the air had become heated and heavy with our scents. Everyone was in a foul mood after the drive down to Raleigh, North Carolina. What we were seeing of our apparent target didn’t improve things.

  Once again, a concrete wall surrounded the perimeter of the Cytek facilit
y, this time rising more than twenty feet. From the top of the concrete wall, razor wire extended outward at a sixty-degree angle another two feet. The thermal and ultraviolet images of the interior fed from Danny’s drones were even more discouraging. There was a guard shack outside the west wall gate; it was reinforced by an iron bar and tire shredders. The parking lot inside was split down the middle by a road, which was bordered on either side by chain-link fence on and automatic rolling gates.

  And then there was the building itself.

  Nothing like the old Biloxi facility, and with very few similarities to the Baltimore facility. It seemed more like a high-security prison than a data center. This was going to be a problem.

  Chan’s tattooed cheeks puffed out in the shadows of the hoodie that had rejoined the black jeans ensemble. “Nothing.”

  Ichi straightened on the bench beside Chan, eyes still half-closed. Ichi wore the same black bodysuit I wore, but hers hid more injuries, more fragile flesh, beneath. “Nothing what?”

  “No blueprints.”

  I glanced up from studying my devices, trying not to sound disappointed, trying not to comment on Chan’s glassy eyes. I’d been counting on blueprints. I’d been counting on something, anything, since seeing what Abhishek and Chan’s data sniffing operation had discovered. “Not even old hardcopies?”

  “Not an old facility. Actually built by new Cytek.”

  I glanced to my right, at Huiyin. Not her people’s work. I wanted to ask her to be sure, but Chan was right. I could feel it. “And it just so happens to be the only one without Cytek signage. Nice. What’s that say?”

  Chan slumped over the computing device that refused to provide the answers we wanted. “Not sure.”

  Huiyin slid off her new black leather jacket, rolled up the long sleeves of a gray mesh shirt that hugged her slender torso, then shoved her data device at me. She tapped on a closeup of the facility’s front entry. “Can we get a better shot of this?”

  I keyed my connection to Danny, who was a few miles north, deeper in the woods. “Danny, what’s the risk bringing a bird in closer for a shot of the building’s western entry?”