“Truth.” She repeated, and he could almost detect a hint of empathy, or maybe distaste. Does she know what kind of filth she's peddling? Velasquez continued, “All of us serve the State.” Such bullshit. “But the fault for this lies upon the traitorous leadership. All dead, and beyond our reach.” Colonel Halstead was dead? The man had been larger than life, the philosopher-warrior: father, teacher, commander. Gone. Betrayed. There was a hole in Firenze’s chest, where a boulder had been ripped from him. How much worse for the teams? How much worse for those that lived?
Velasquez explained, “The rank and file should not be lynched because justice was denied. They have been judged only for their failure to break from unlawful orders.” The only unlawful thing is you, and your agency. “They have been discharged as appropriate, and remanded into civilian life. As you were not party to the military code, you were not charged under it. With a lack of evidence against you, and corroborated evidence that you were held against your will, no charges were filed. You were held as protection, and your testimony was instrumental in building the case against the traitors.”
Firenze stared, dumbly. The world was dim and cold. This wasn't real. This was a nightmare, and he would wake at any moment. Double traitor. I’m a double traitor. Once to the State. Once to my friends. I'm a snitch, a narc, a treasonous rat. I will be dead in a week. No need to throw me in prison. So much cheaper to let the streets do their bloody work. “You've killed me.” He mumbled.
Velasquez sighed. After a moment, she said, “Hardly. You're free to go. I just came here to return your property.” She drew a package from her briefcase, tossed it to him. Battered, tampered, and scuffed, the brushed metal frame of his assist box slammed him in the chest, and he clutched it. He pulled it into his chest, and held it, tight. “Here.” She said, and threw another bag to him. “Clothes, identicard, credit chips. That's enough to start a new life. You aren't going back to school soon, but maybe you can find work as a code jockey.” She turned to leave, but stopped at the door. She glanced back, one last time, to add, “It's a life, Mister Firenze. It's not much, but it's something. I'd walk far away from here, and start living. You're free.”
She was gone, as quick and quiet as she'd come. Firenze sat on the cot, and stared at the pile of money and clothes, spilled out on the concrete. Bought and paid for, with thirty pieces of silver. He clutched the assist box so tight his chest hurt. He started to rock back and forth. What would he say, when the mob came? What would he say when Hill, or Clausen, or a dozen others, came for him? What would he say when Kawalski's ghost came howling, and demanded recompense? How would he answer? It's not my fault? The words were empty, impotent. He shook. He stared. He rocked, back and forth, pointless rage and hopeless gloom pouring from him like thunderheads.
“Get up.” Someone said. One of the guards stood in the open door. “Get up.” He repeated, pointing his truncheon. “You don't belong here.”
The jail blurred towards the exit, his feet moved by invisible conveyor belts, the guards “helping” him towards the door, towards the open world beyond, laughing about how “some jail birds like it here” and how they “never understood that”. Firenze understood. He grokked it. The guards gave him a bag, they gave him a shower, they gave him a shave, and they threw him out the door, to die.
He sat on the frozen stone steps, the slush puddles melting through his pants. He waited there, and stared at the walls of marble and glass, at the all-pervading gray and sleeting rain of a Capital winter. They'd built this place on a swamp, and he was sure they'd never quite drained it. He could taste it now, on the freezing rain, the earthy taste of muck and grime, the chemical sterility that the water picked up as it plunged through the beltways and lift cars – it tasted like Kessinwey. It stung his face, and he could feel his clothes weighing heavier and heavier as the filthy rain poured over him, but it was distant, as if it was happening to someone else, so far away.
He was lost. Alone. So many dead and buried by his “word”. Everything was gone.
His hand clutched the hard frame of his assist box. It was heavy and solid in his hands.
Not everything.
There was something he could still do. One debt he could still pay. He stood, as if pulled by strings. His feet began to move, one over the other, down the steps, into the slush-filled streets and steaming sidewalk vents, drawing him towards the darkest corners, towards the outer belt and dronetowns, to the places he'd known as a child. All cities had these nooks and shadows, places where enough credits could buy you any hardware. Places where money was its own virtue. Places where you could get anything: clean, wiped, and prepped.
The Agency had given him thirty thousand credits, enough to buy a life.
It was two thousand, flat and upfront, to scrub his name and face out of the databanks, and become someone who could do business in dronetown. Twenty six thousand credits bumped an assist box and microfab workshop off the back of a supply truck. Fifteen hundred bought him six months in tenement housing, moderately dingy, mildly infested, and incredibly private. The rest went to food, barely edible, but enough to live through the project.
That night, he sat at his workbench, plywood draped over foamcrete barricades, lit under blazing white spotlights. All of it was stolen from the abandoned roadwork outside, tools and pieces scavenged from the remains of a civilization that had rolled up its carpet and left dronetown to burn. Across his makeshift laboratory, he unfurled his tools, clipped on his cleankit, and peeled apart the blackened assist box. The hours passed in a blur of solder, microscopes, and chipsets. Hard tap modifications were removed, firmware scrubbed, boot records flashed. Broken bricks of memory, singed and tarnished, were digitized and reconstructed. The 3D printer laid down the nanofab, layering on precious materials over mirrored surfaces while lasers sliced the dies and platters. He'd worked with much better hardware at the university, but three generations out-of-date was still functional, and what he lost in finesse, he replaced with rending passion. There was nothing but this. Just the work, and his body the platform to complete it.
Hours became days, and he was drawn back to Kessinwey. He lived on protein shakes and hydration packs, pull ups and soldering. He never thought he'd pine for scheduled meals and stupid arguments about a mocking nickname. He never thought he'd miss the hardened killers and bullshit braggadocio, that concealed wounded strength and solemn oaths. He never thought he'd wake up and sprint a mile in place because he had to, because some invisible dead chorus demanded it.
He'd never thought he would be a traitor, either.
Days passed, and hardware fell into software. Line after line was meticulously extracted, drawn from memory, flash templates, and charred bits of data that burned into the broken box. The Agency had prodded it, looted the tomb for data, and in doing so, and done the hardest reconstruction for him, the nanoscale molecular stacking, the electromagnetic ghosting, the virtual reconstruction. Now, their callous rape would be his best hope for some measure of redemption.
The screen popped to life, and a young woman stood against the blue sky background. “Good morning!” She said, professionally. “Thank you for using the Cypher Assist Mask Tritium Edition, revision-” Firenze cut the feed. It wasn't right. He wouldn't watch that. It would be a betrayal.
Line by line, function by function, object by object, he carved his path. Simple pointers gave way to layered algorithms, sections of adaptive code bolted-on from the original box. As he worked, he was surprised at how much just came to him, ghosting out of some space beyond memory like deja vu, clicking into place just so whenever he hit the wall. An assist box was designed to allow the user to reactively operate in a alien digital environment, to let the user “intend” and control at a high level, while subconsciously working through the assist mask to directly coordinate and code. To do this, the adaptive mask had to be trained, to be molded to fit the mind of the user, altered fundamentally to interface with the human mind. It had never occurred to him how much of that adapta
tion may have been mutual, or what code might have blown in, back across the hardjack. This should have bothered him. It did not. All he could feel was muted satisfaction, as he conjured line after line. Entire pages of code flowed out, sprung from sections of his wetware, more art that science. He wrote, not knowing where he was going, just that an object had to be, and later grasping what he’d conjured.
He let loose the spiders, the autocompilers, the automated heuristics, built tools to build better tools, sometimes just sat back and watched as semi-intelligent programs drew the base code together, like a magnet over a pile of shavings, creating whorls and patterns never intended, but completely correct in their structure. More and more, this looked right, mapped to the invisible design contained inside the graybox in his mind.
Days became weeks, until the structure of time and the structure of code were indistinguishable. Information desired to be free, but it also craved structure, math, and logic. Give me time, and money, and reason, and I shall create for you a system unlike any other. Give me passion, and I can conjure whatever I desire, and I what I crave is salvation.
He stood in a virtual world, while his body slumbered on a pile of boxes and discarded tools. This world was familiar, but strange. The walls were white, close at hand and infinitely far away, full-bright and featureless. They always were. His tools lay before him, on arcs of tables. Some were missing. Some were new. The same as always, and irrevocably changed. With a motion, the first of the blackboxes sprung to his hands. With a twist, he spun the puzzle box open, and spilled out its radiant contents.
The luminous sphere rose from the collapsing box, liquid brilliance that bent and twisted in the light. He held it, hovering, between his hands, responding to his touch before he reached it. It sung, and rippled, and he drew one finger across it, gently. The world hummed. More than heard, he felt, the solid click of integration. The mask was nearly ready.
He raised it up, parallel to his eyes, and drew it wider, let the stars shine. It wasn't right, not yet, but it was close enough to load. Full integration would take time. It would take work - the brain breaking kind. It had to be done. She deserved more than sudden, permanent silence.
He closed his hand, crushed the sphere inside his fist, and braced for raw connection.
Light boiled through his fingers, streamed through the cracks. The hum became a whine, the singing a roar. His skin burned, and luminance claimed him-
The sun rose from the ocean. It rose, and carried with it a great dome of steam and fury. The star blazed, scorched forests and fields as it ascended, turned the seas to ruin. It climbed, higher and higher. He was being pulled up, away, apart, drowned in the fire-
-the Airship was dying, sick and twisted and tormented-
The hallway was an abattoir.
Systems melted under the black sludge.
-Hill shoved him. A child screamed as the light-
-the Phalanx AI was gone, its core snuffed-
-Kawalski was dead, and he was sobbing, crawling through the dead-
-everything was gone-
He lay in the meadow, with the twinkling flitter of birdsong all around him. He'd never been here, only seen it in children's vids, but it was as real as his old bedroom.
He was standing in that bedroom, in Old Chicago. He was sitting at the university. He was training Kessinwey. He was hiding a Capital slum.
The lake was so very blue, when he turned from the five-fold reality.
“I'm... alive?” She asked. They stood between worlds, where the beltway met the flowers. Lauren was burnt, covered in grime, her fatigue jacket torn, her speech slurred. She sounded shocked. That wasn’t possible. Firenze hadn’t enabled the full emotional emulation package.
“Yeah.” He said. “You're not quite well. No yet. But cognitive patterns should be-”
She grabbed him, hand in hand, and pulled him close. She held him, eyes closed and streaked with tears. She held him, desperately. She whispered, “Thank you. Thank you.” She repeated the words, and used tears for punctuation. That function was not enabled. Something like cold panic leaked from the back of his mind. I'm over the edge. Cross-platform processing. She's using my wetware as a secondary black box, hijacking my brain for emotional simulation. Oh, boy, I've done it now. This is how I lose my mind. Guys like Professor Neland, or kendrix, or Lieutenant Donegan liked to talk about ‘sovereignty of the mind’, the elusive quality that defined you as you, no matter how much wetware you cranked into your skull. That little concept, that little phrase, that he’d brushed aside, was what kept masks from going rampant. It’s what kept you in charge of your own frying pan. He’d never realized just how close he’d been to the line. He’d never even seen it, until he was looking back.
He should have understood.
He should have been mulling it over when he chose to let the mask keep running after purge date, as Lauren grew more ‘real’ with each day. He should have been dwelling on it at every step of these past weeks, while he’d soldered, fabbed, and coded. He should have thought of it, at least, when he synced for raw integration, with compromised wetware and contaminated code.
He should have, but he hadn’t, and he didn’t, now. Staring at the last grasp for his own sovereignty, he didn’t care.
“No problem.” He replied, with a cocky smirk he’d practiced for days.
“No problem?” She asked, eyes darting to the wall, where the code ran in waterfalls. “From memory?” She asked. “Wow, I have been a good influence. That's some grade-A work.”
“You're judging me?” He asked, and conjured a chair . “After this?”
“I always judge. It's my prerogative.” She replied. She raised one small hand – he felt the world shudder, the sun shift in color, the song in tempo – he was in his study. Her voice was clear now, her code refined. “There. All finished, polished, and complied. I even added comments. You know, the things you left blank, because you’re lazy. Always comment your code, Grant, it's impolite to make others guess.” She smiled, and exclaimed, “I'm back. I’m actually back.” She took a step across the study, ran her fingers over the wooden mantel, picked up bits of dust. “It's good. We’re here. Some changes? You've made some upgrades?” She stopped. Her eyes went wide, and she spun on him, “No.” She stepped back, horrified. “Wetware operation? You can’t!”
He shrugged, “Had to get you back. Best way was to pattern from the last save-state. Snapshot the code in motion.”
“Too far.” She said. “Too risky!” She turned away, opened her hands, and the wall became a deluge of machine code. “I'm going to have to extract the hard way, image over to the box for most critical functions. You’re an idiot, Grant. A real flaming idiot.” She softened again, and said, “Thank you. You have no idea – yes, you do.” She didn't say anything else, but stood there, waiting. He stepped closer, and put a hand on her shoulder. She pulled him closer again. Integration. He could feel the roar of the code somewhere near the sun, high over the lake.
Time ceased meaning, locked in the truer world. The sun ripped apart the broken, created the whole. It was good to be intending again, working as they were meant to. They moved in tandem, labored with a joy uncalled by the tedium of the work, tore away data retrieval errors and compiler faults (excepting one particular encapsulation set, which she insisted was “cute” and refused to move). This was home. This was where they were meant to be, shaving the ephemeral into something beautiful. She never once asked him if he was okay. He never told her. They both knew the answer.
But all things had an ending.
Firenze's retreat ended, twenty-two days after it started, with a buzz at the door.
From inside the workspace, he tapped the apartment's security feed. It wasn’t difficult. A quick flick of his fingers, and he stared at the entranceway.
Outside, Sergeant Clausen hammered on the entry button, using his fist like a sledge. He was wrapped in layers, bundled against the biting chill, and his beard had grown wild. Fierce eyes blazed fro
m under the hood. He's come to kill me. Behind the ex-Sergeant, a smaller man lurked, shifting foot to foot, swiveling his head back and forth, as if he was trying to size up the entire street at every glance. Berenson. Firenze froze. What was he doing here?
“I don't like him.” Lauren breathed.
“No one likes him.” Firenze said. “We knew this was coming. They would find me.” He reached for the disconnect. “I need to face Sarge. If that means I have to deal with Berenson, fine, I'll pay.” He gave his best smile, “Hopefully, I'll be back.”
“If they kill you, don't let them pawn me.” With that, she was gone. The world followed, vanished into black and cold.
He opened his eyes. He lay on the couch, scratchy fibers jabbed into his back, pierced right through his sweater. The space heater had failed. Again. The whole room was covered in frost. His fingers were frigid. His toes were numb.
He shuffled, shivering, over the bare floors. For a moment, he weighed his options. He could not open the door. He could run out the back. He could flee into the net. Jump nodes, cut the connection. Ghost.
It was a stupid idea. A fantasy, bread from too many deep runs and too many group delusions, ideas tossed about in anonymity between deepnet radicals. The idea was more cult than fact, with a trail of stupid bodies.
Stupid. Like what he was about to do.
He stood before the door. Beyond, there was death. There was no avoiding it. He’d known they’d find him. They were professionals. It had only been a question of timing. I finished my task. He was ready. He would take what he’d learned, what he’d become, and face this, head on. He rested his hand against the lock panel, took one last breath. He glanced to the window. There, in the cluttered street, between trash fires and blackened snow, they waited. Berenson, shifting from foot to foot, never looking in the same place, twice. Clausen, glaring at the road as if it might turn and attack.
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