by M. D. Cooper
“Any idea what’s going on?” Trey asked as it pulled up to the curb.
“No,” she said tersely. “But whatever ‘it’ is, it involves Schramm and Erving, too.”
They got into the taxi and went silent, not wanting to be overheard by the driver. At the moment, she didn’t even feel comfortable using her Link. Though the hardware resided in her body, Rexcare had purchased it—which meant it could have any number of monitoring devices built in. She’d never minded that before, since there had never been anything she’d wanted to hide that Rexcare didn’t also want to remain willfully ignorant of.
That might no longer be the case.
She decided that she had two top priorities. First, she and Trey had to get off the grid, where Rexcare couldn’t find them.
The second priority would ensure that they could remain off the grid—which posed its own dangers.
They needed to jailbreak her Link.
OPTIONS
DATE: 05.24.8948 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Tommy’s Gun Shop, Ohiyo, Akonwara
REGION: Machete System, PED 4B, Orion Freedom Alliance
“I didn’t expect to see you back so soon.” Tommy didn’t seem at all surprised by the fact that people would show up at his shop at such a strange hour. No doubt that was standard operating procedure for him. He did seem puzzled and concerned when he realized who his visitors were, though.
He continued, “If there’s something wrong with the Rikulfs, I’ll take care of it for you. I can fix just about any weapon or security device.”
Reece closed and locked the door behind them. “That’s why we’re here. But not because of the Rikulfs. I need you to jailbreak my Link.”
Tommy sucked in a breath. “Of all the things I expected you to say, that wasn’t one of them.”
“I bet. But you did say there was nothing you couldn’t do with a security device.”
Tommy pulled at his earlobe. “That wasn’t exactly what I said. And a proprietary Link inside someone’s head isn’t the same thing as an anti-theft system.”
Reece didn’t have time to argue with him. “I’ll put it this way. I’m convinced that my safest course of action right now is to let you jailbreak a device that’s directly connected to my nervous system. Do you think it’s a good idea for me to remain here longer than necessary, with the Link active as it is right now, while we debate the finer points of safety?”
Tommy tightened his jaw. “Good point. This way.”
Without waiting to see if they followed, he crossed the shop and opened the door to the back.
The door he never let anyone else go through.
In spite of the situation, Reece felt the thrill of finally being able to see what was behind the door.
As she found herself looking at a short hallway with a bathroom at one end and an apparent storage room at the other, Reece felt mildly disappointed.
She and Trey followed Tommy into the storage room, where they went straight to the back wall and proceeded halfway down the row of shelves, then stopped.
Tommy reached out and grabbed the edge of a two-meter section of shelving. Like all the others in the room, it held a variety of bins and boxes.
The section shelving of slid out from the wall without too much difficulty. Reece stepped back in surprise. There had been nothing that indicated the section wasn’t solidly attached to the shelves on either side.
She stepped around Tommy, intrigued that he’d revealed a door, but before she could ask any questions, he yanked it open and went in.
Reece glanced over her shoulder at Trey. If they had been using their Link, she was pretty sure he’d make some crack about not being too sure about disappearing into a back room with this dude.
He remained silent, though, looking intense but calm.
She liked that he kept hold of himself when shit got serious. It boded well for what was to come.
She stepped into the hidden room, which was larger than she’d expected. Judging by the size, it ran the entire length of the building, though it was only a couple meters wide. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all covered in a shiny gray material.
Tommy closed the door. “I have a lot of dampening in here. EM signals can’t get in or out. So we’re safe to work. Though, if they tracked you here and are on their way right now, we’re kind of screwed. Is that a possibility?”
Was it? Reece looked a Trey, who gazed back at her.
“I think it’s unlikely,” she decided. “They’d be more interested in tracking me, then acquiring me if they don’t come up with anything useful. But I don’t know anything for sure at the moment.”
Trey held up a hand. “Do you think they revoked our metro passes to agitate us and see what we’d do?”
“That’s my suspicion,” Reece said. “That they hope we’ll lead them somewhere.”
Trey stared at her blankly, then his eyes widened. “To Schramm. Right?”
She hadn’t had time to think it through that far, but when she added up Schramm’s absence, Erving’s nervousness and failure to show up at their meeting, and then the voiding of their metro passes, it all seemed to fall into place. “It seems likely.”
Tommy had gone to the far end of the room, where a long table took up the entire length of the short wall. “So, we’re doing this?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Yeah. What do we need to do?”
“Help me clear this table.” He began taking bins off it and setting them a couple meters away.
When the table was clear, Tommy opened one of the bins he’d moved and handed Reece a spray bottle. “Spray the table down to sanitize it.”
She looked at the bottle and wondered if the sanitizing agent Rexcare was working to develop from barley enzymes would have been superior—if it were available. With a glance at Trey, she could tell he was wondering the same thing.
Funny. Compared to what they now faced, their job figuring out what had happened to Hatchet and Pipe seemed like good times.
Reece sanitized the table, as directed. Meanwhile, Tommy rummaged through bins, pulling things out and setting them aside.
“Now lie down,” he said.
Trey approached. “Just how dangerous is this?”
Tommy began setting machinery on the table. The odd assortment of relatively square and rectangular things, with a few long, pointy things appeared somewhat alarming.
Reece stopped looking at them. It wouldn’t help. Instead, she turned her face to the ceiling and closed her eyes. “Depends on whether they included anti-tamper hardware. If they did—and we trigger it—it could cause serious damage to my nervous system. I don’t think Rexcare would do that to me, though.”
“Because they so clearly have great loyalty to you?” Trey asked, sarcastically.
“No. Because it costs a lot, and I’m not really worth the effort.” Reece doubted that her assessment made Trey feel better, but she derived a little comfort from it.
On the other hand, she felt pretty sure that Rexcare had probably included some covert monitoring capabilities in her Link implants. Since she was a fixer, and privy to intimate details about the company that others—outside of the highest-level execs—were not, it made practical sense to install such a failsafe. Knowing that wasn’t the least bit comforting.
All the more reason to get this done quickly.
“So what does the best-case scenario look like, here?” Trey asked.
“You have a Link, right?” Tommy asked Trey. “Probably way more sophisticated than hers, even.”
Reece opened her eyes to look at Trey. He never talked to people about his augments. Not only because of his personal history and feelings about augments, but also because people in Machete looked at such things far differently than his people did.
Trey tensed and looked down at the floor. “Yes. More sophisticated, but not proprietary. None of this corporate booby-trapping.”
Tommy turned his full attention on Trey. “Actually...” He trailed off, lo
oking intently at Trey, apparently thinking something through. “Actually, we can use that. I assume you’re able to establish a point-to-point connection that doesn’t use Akon’s network?”
“Sure.”
“That’s great. We can connect you to Reece and you can be in contact with her while we do this. Normally we’d do it via the usual means but using any part of the local network would be a bad idea, for obvious reasons. Since Reece will be paralyzed while I work on her, she won’t be able to speak to us.”
“Paralyzed?” Trey asked.
Tommy nodded. “Yeah. I don’t know how your people do it, but here, we need all voluntary and involuntary movement stopped to be able to work on the neural connections. The only movement she’ll have will be for breathing.”
Trey studied Reece, as if trying to gauge how disturbing that reality was for her.
She didn’t love it, but there was nothing she could do about it. She gave Trey a tiny nod to assure him that she was okay.
“All right. Let’s do what we need to do and get this over with.” Trey had moved on to her own way of looking at the situation.
Tommy lifted an injector and moved to stand next to Reece. “First, I’m going to give you a relaxant. Then we’ll do the paralytic. It’s a bad feeling to lose control of your body, and a lot of people flip out over it.
“Fine. Let’s just get going.” Reece closed her eyes again and felt a light, brief pressure on her neck.
Tommy said, “While that takes effect, Trey, establish a Link with her. Both of you need to keep it open. If you close it, you might not be able to reestablish it until the paralytic wears off.”
Reece laughed. Oh. The relaxant must have started to work. She felt kind of…groovy. It was nice, really.
With her eyes closed, she smiled. If he was trying to distract her by being funny, he was doing a marvelous job.
Trey commented.
“You ready for the paralytic?” Tommy asked.
“Ready as I’m going to get,” Reece said aloud.
She felt Tommy’s hand on her neck. “Try to stay relaxed.”
Reece tried. She tried her very best. But as soon as the pressure at her neck left, she felt a streak of panic, knowing that her body was about to become completely beyond her control. She waited for a tingle or something, but nothing happened. She felt normal.
She flexed her hands, but found them heavy, like they’d been encased in cement. Lifting her knees did nothing.
His voice chased away the panic.
“Is she okay?” Tommy asked.
“She’s fine,” Trey answered. “It takes more than a little paralysis to keep her down.”
Reece laughed to herself inside her mind.
“Good,” Tommy said. “Move aside, please, and stay back. Don’t accidentally touch me.”
She again felt like laughing.
Reece imagined him wearing a diaper. It was good that she was under the effects of a paralytic, because otherwise she would have laughed herself right off the table and no doubt caused Tommy to gouge holes in her brain, or burn it, or whatever.
But their Link went silent.
Tommy intruded on their conversation. “I’m going to install a second core for the implants, and then I’ll be able to take control of Rexcare’s proprietary bits.”
“She’d prefer silence,” Trey said.
“Oh. Okay. I’ll be quiet unless I need her to do something.”
Reece heard Trey chuckle softly.
Reece tried to imagine Trey as an adolescent, and had a hard time picturing it.
Trey gave an audible snort.
Reece wanted to sigh, but her body was busy pretending she didn’t exist.
Trey gave a rueful laugh.