Rhys said, “It’ll be a fifty-thousand volt whoopee cushion.”
Brett followed with, “But it’s the amps that will kick his ass.”
Wen Jing said, “I’m still real nervous. I’ve never been bait.”
Rhys quipped, “Jail bait, as it were.”
Brett quickly reprimanded him, “Unfunny, Detective,” but Wen Jing still chuckled.
Alana said, “Detective Rhys will be across the street in the men’s clothing store, browsing. Detective Crabtree—”
Brett corrected Alana for a change, “Detective Inspector Crabtree.”
Alana ignored the remark, but everyone else within earshot smiled, smirked, or outright snickered. She said, “As I was saying, DI Crabtree will be in the back room, watching on a remote camera. If you need us to intervene before we jump him, your safe word is ‘chai tea.’ It’s a tea shop, so I expect you can easily work that one into the conversation. Just ask him if he’s ever had it or something like that.”
Wen Jing said, “That’s not going to work if he’s from China. ‘Cha’ means ‘tea.’ I’ll have to ask him if he’s ever had masala chai, which is what Americans mean when they say ‘chai tea.’”
Alana said, “Well, that’s another reason why we asked you to do this. That’s the kind of cultural mistake any one of us would have made.”
Rhys was compelled to note, “I knew the difference.”
Alana chided him, “Yes, but you aren’t a young, attractive Chinese-American girl.”
“Perhaps not, but if you put my brain case in a different body, I could become one.”
Alana got the last word in the exchange, “That would break the Cyber Commandments, and I don’t think the court would let us get away with something like that ever again.”
Brett smiled, trying to repress his anxiety about drafting his fiancée to lure a suspect out into the open, “I know you can do it. Chief Inspector Graves is confident in our ability to get to you before anything can go terribly wrong. I mean, it’s not like Chu will bash down the door wearing a suit of Chinese combat armor.”
Wen Jing took a deep breath and let it out quickly. Then she took another and let it out slowly. “Walk in, look around, take my assigned seat, talk nice to him long enough for you to scan him, and make sure I’m not playing footsies with him when you flip the switch. I think I can remember that. And ‘masala chai,’ if needed.”
Alana said, “We’re going to leave now to finish setting everything up and to get into position. The sensors and the booby trap were installed this morning. Just get down there as if everything was normal and the plan should work itself out. Try to be as close to the meeting time as you can, but don’t be late.”
Wen Jing asked, “What if Chu doesn’t show? Or what if he calls at the last minute and changes the venue?”
Alana said, “If that happens, abort the mission immediately and use your safe word. We’ll have a tap on your phone, so we might be able to trace him if he’s still in the neighborhood.”
The team broke, with Brett saying a longer goodbye than the rest, taking Wen Jing by both hands. He didn’t take the opportunity to get closer, ostensibly to avoid disturbing his girlfriend’s meticulously applied makeup. He caught up with Alana and Rhys, who awaited him at the elevators. Alana said, “Be honest—are you okay with this, Brett?”
Brett stepped into the elevator first, holding the door for the others, “No, ma’am, I most certainly am not. But Wen Jing is a big girl, and she’s strong-willed. She wants to help. She trusts your judgment in this matter, even if I don’t. If anything happens to her...”
Rhys placed his hand on Brett’s shoulder, “Just be sure to yell out on the radio if you spot anything out of the ordinary.”
Other than Alana communicating via her Vira with other officers, the car carrying the detectives was devoid of conversation on the way to the venue. The car pulled into the small strip-mall’s parking lot, stopping long enough to let Brett debark. Inspector Crabtree knocked on the back door, and it opened to admit him. The car then pulled out of the back lot and circled the block, parallel parking along the street, opposite the tea shop’s gold-stenciled glass-panes. Rhys and Alana exited the vehicle and met on the sidewalk.
Alana took Rhys by both hands in the same manner Brett had taken Wen Jing’s earlier. She said, “You’ll be shopping for men’s clothes on this side of the street. You should be able to see the whole storefront. I’m going to pretend to do some shopping on the other side of the street, and ten minutes before the show starts, I’ll go in and take my place. Any questions?”
Rhys said, “None at all, ma’am,” as he bent down and kissed Alana.
The pair separated, waving at one another as if they were still in the early throes of a blossoming relationship. It was twenty minutes until four, and the pair of detectives both found it difficult to make the time pass quickly. Both had visited and browsed the displayed stock of two individual shops before Alana finally made her way to the tea shop.
The inside of the shop was clean, with cherry wood molding, tables, and chairs. The staff was fully automated, with both a gynoid waitbot and an android barristabot. The owners of the shop were cooperating fully, but they did not want to interrupt their Friday afternoon business as the after-school teenage crowd was a major source of their income. The owners were prescient, in that at least half the seats were occupied by high school-age students sipping coffee or tea and snacking on freshly baked pastries of both Asian and European style. Alana was mostly concerned that one of the kids would ignore the reservation sign, but the primarily Asian flock was much better behaved than she would have expected from Euro-American kids. Even those whose fashion sense was intentionally counter-cultural were reasonably well-groomed, and several of them were adorned with sleek, augmented-reality spectacles. One teenage boy was looking directly at Alana, smiling, as if he was mentally undressing her, or perhaps using his computerized vision gear to superimpose a simulated image. Mostly, they teenagers laughed, sometimes boisterously, but they were respectful of each other, and one trio who departed shortly after Alana arrived even cleaned up their table.
Alana looked for the main camera, which she knew to be hidden so it could overlook the entire dining area. If she didn’t know it was there, she would not have seen it, disguised, as it was, as a bottle of mineral water. She nodded toward the camera to let Brett know she was in position. The waitbot approached her, and she ordered a masala chai latte, partly in honor of Wen Jing’s safe word, and partly because she had never had one before. She found it much more amenable to her electronic taste buds than coffee had been, sweet, instead of unbearably bitter.
Halfway through her first cup of tea, Wen Jing opened the door and walked inside. She looked around the room as if to see if her date had arrived early. Not seeing Chu among the other patrons, she stepped to the reserved booth, called the waitbot over, and handed it the reserved sign. The robot asked her for her order, and she asked for a cup of hot, honey-ginger tea. When her order arrived, she politely thanked the robot and began sipping, trying to keep watch on the door for the suspect to appear.
Four o’clock came and went, and there was no sign of Louis Chu. Wen Jing ordered another cup, this time a cup of hot, jujube tea. Ten minutes later, she had finished it as well. She stood and looked over the crowd again to make sure she had not overlooked Chu, but he was still not present. Her third cup of tea was chrysanthemum.
In the back room, Brett was glued to a computer screen that had been set up by the stakeout team early in the morning. He was surprised when, out of curiosity, he zoomed in on Wen Jing’s cup, only to find a real flower floating near the bottom of the lightly amber-tinged liquid.
Four-fifteen came and went. Wen Jing whispered, as quietly as she could, “How long should I wait?”
Alana whispered back into her clandestine earpiece, “Until five. Could be—”
In the back room, Brett was so intently focused on Wen Jing that he almost failed to notice whe
n Alana summoned the waitbot over to her table.
Alana held out her hand, and the robot produced a pen from one of its belt pouches and gave it to her. The robot turned and walked back toward the service counter. Alana then placed her cloth napkin atop the table and began writing something in large letters. When she finished, she stood up. Brett moved his fingers to the surveillance monitor and zoomed in to examine the writing, which was in crude, block letters on three lines—
NICE
TRY,
COPS!
Brett frantically zoomed back out, just in time to see Alana walk up to Wen Jing, reach out, grab the young woman by her throat, and shove her back against her booth. His body temperature instantaneously seemed to drop below freezing. He screamed, “Rhys! Help! Now!” as he leapt from his folding chair and lunged for the door, stumbling in his haste. He threw the back door open and dashed through. He could see Alana hunched over Wen Jing’s booth, and he could see his fiancée’s legs kicking beneath the table. She was trying to cry out, but she couldn’t.
The young patrons were scattering, some running for the door, others backing against the wall, as Brett bull-rushed Alana. He screamed, “What are you doing?” even though he knew what must be happening. Somehow, Louis Chu must have done what everyone was saying was impossible: he had hacked Alana’s body and was using it to attack Wen Jing. Grabbing Alana’s cybernetic frame and locking it in a full nelson, Brett tried to pull her away from his love, but the gynoid was stronger than she looked, stronger than he. Even when he managed to pull her body backwards, it adjusted to the shift and kept its footing, and all he accomplished was dragging Wen Jing’s body a few inches away from the back of her seat. Alana still had her neck firmly grasped in her right hand. Wen Jing’s arms stopped flailing and went limp. Her tongue was protruding from her mouth, her eyes bulged, and she was gurgling. Brett screamed, “Stop it! If you can hear me, please, stop!”
Rhys threw open the front door of the cafe and charged inside, his sidearm drawn. It took him a couple of precious seconds to appraise the situation, which included drawing the correct conclusion that Alana had somehow been taken over. He yelled to Brett, “Get clear!”
Brett reluctantly released his ineffective hold on Alana’s body and Rhys fired, his shot causing sparks to arc all around Alana. He fired again, with the same electric display, but although the Chief Inspector’s body seemed to stop moving, her hand was still choking Wen Jing. Rhys dropped his pistol on the floor, where it clattered, spinning around twice before it stopped, “Crabtree! Look for a knife!”
Brett ran behind the counter and began throwing open drawers and cabinets. Rhys grabbed Alana’s hand with both his fingers and tried to pry them loose from Wen Jing’s neck, but he could not get any leverage without causing the young woman even more harm.
Seconds later, Brett ran to the booth holding onto a bread knife, “Do something!” he screamed.
Rhys held out his hand and Brett handed over the blade before he collapsed onto his knees, tears streaming from his eyes. Rhys grabbed Alana’s wrist and started vigorously slicing around the artificial nanotube musculature, which was tough and loathe to surrender to his onslaught. He said, “Crabtree, call in our backup and EMTs now! I can’t do that and this.”
Brett reached for his phone, but couldn’t find it, and he knew he must have left it in the back room. He ran back, grabbed it, and screamed for help. Brett reemerged from the back room in time to watch Rhys gently lay Wen Jing out on the floor beside her booth. Her neck was already purple from bruising, and she was struggling to breathe, and otherwise not moving.
Rhys removed his suit coat, folded it, and gently slid it under Wen Jing’s head. He looked at Brett, wanting to say something, anything, but no words came.
Friday, 14 July, 18:10
Alana screamed as her eyelids snapped open, an autonomic expression of exactly what she was thinking before she regained control of her chassis. Her arms jerked, only to be held in check by restraints. She could not feel her right hand. She tried to sit up, but also found herself held down. A battery of lights as bright as day shone into her eyes, momentarily washing-out her vision until the cameras adjusted their apertures to compensate. She glanced around, trying to get her bearings. She was obviously inside a shopital repair ward, surrounded by monitoring equipment and strapped down to a table.
Rhys was standing by on her right side. He placed both hands on her arm, “Alana! It’s Ben. You’re all right now. Calm down.”
On her left side, she recognized Doctor Phelps, the senior technician who had treated her on multiple occasions. If anything, his silver hair had only grown lighter since she had last seen him. He said, “Tell me who you are, and don’t be obtuse this time.”
Alana let her body relax, which would have been impossible if she wasn’t mechanical from the brain case on down. She said, deliberately, and anything but calmly, “I’m Detective Chief Inspector Alana Graves. What happened?”
From behind her, she heard Srinivas Darzi’s Indian accent, “I hate to admit it, but I now have no doubt. You were hacked. It’s the only explanation, and I have no clue as to how Chu did it yet. As a precaution, I’ve disabled your transponder systems, so you should be safe from any further intrusions.”
Alana’s panic began to give way to an even more urgent feeling of frustration. She had fallen into involuntary sensory deprivation for what seemed like hours, just as the other kidnap victims had reported. It was the one condition with which she had never learned to cope. Her words were full of anger, mostly at what she knew was her underestimation of her suspect, “Wendy! Where is she? Where’s Crabtree? Tell me what the fuck happened!”
Rhys said, calmly, as he squeezed her arm, “Your body was puppeted and used to attack Wendy. She’s in the hospital. Intensive care. I’m not going to lie to you. She’s very badly injured. Crabtree’s with her right now.” He looked up at Doctor Phelps, “I think DCI Graves is okay. Can you wait outside so we can discuss police matters?”
Phelps nodded, saying, “We’ll repair your hand after you’re finished. Call the charge nurse if you need anything,” as he opened the door and departed.
Alana asked, “I’m guessing we didn’t make any arrests?”
Rhys shook his head, “I’m afraid not. DI Washington called me while we were en route. He followed up on some surveillance data, and it’s looking like Chu was already outside of the country when he set Wendy up. I think he was onto us from the very beginning.”
“Why did he go to that much effort then? Was it just to hurt—” Alana couldn’t bring herself to say, ‘Wendy.’
“I have no idea. We’ll have to ask him, if we ever get the chance. I took the liberty of issuing a full APB, as well as domestic and Interpol arrest warrants while we were waiting on Doctor Phelps to finish, but we’ll have to track the little bastard down first. To do something as brazen as he did, he feels secure, wherever he is. Sadly, our relations still haven’t recovered from the hit they took when we defaulted on our Asian debt after the revolution. If he went back to China, we probably won’t be able to extradite him.”
Alana started to ask how Chu could have known she was there at all, much less a police officer, but her words failed to form when she remembered the boy who seemed to be leering at her in the tea shop. It would have been child’s play, literally, for Louis Chu to ask any of his young friends to drop by the store with a pair of eyeglasses equipped with a camera. Alana’s image was almost certainly in public domain facial recognition databases after her recent trial made the national news. Any accessory to the crime would probably not even know what they were doing. Alana tried to lean her head back far enough to see Srinivas, but he was stooping down below the table on which she was ensconced. She said, more loudly than was necessary, “Srinu, is there anything you can tell me about how this happened? Anything at all?”
Srinivas said, “I’m extracting the log files from your subprocessor as I speak. The good news is that they haven’t been eras
ed, like Veedock’s were—”
Alana interrupted, “That means you think Veedock was hacked too?”
“Yes, I do now. I think that when Detective Rhys shot you, the stun charges might have broken the connection before he could erase his electronic fingerprints. I’ll be staying late tonight to analyze it, and I’ll send you a report as soon as I have time to make one.”
Alana asked, “How’s Crabtree?”
Rhys hesitated and the room seemed to grow deathly silent before he finally said, “Not well. You should wait for him to come to you.”
The conversation stopped completely after that. Srinivas finished downloading data from Alana’s internal computers.
Friday, 14 July, 19:30
Alana rubbed the newly repaired skin around her right wrist where Rhys had used a bread knife to sever the artificial musculature. If he hadn’t done it, Wen Jing might have died. As it was, the young cyber forensicist was still in critical condition, as everyone was sitting in the situation room could see on the live video feed that Brett was broadcasting from a phone-mounted camera from outside the operating room. The closed windows and dimmed lights made the scene look like an old-fashioned movie theater, with the medical drama playing out in real-time on the whiteboard too real, the audience too close to the lead actress to breathe at a normal volume.
The door opened, the brighter light from the corridor silhouetting a group of other workers as they filed in to stand at the back of the room, keeping anything they might have to say to whispers. For over an hour while the surgeons, nurses, and robots worked to save Wen Jing’s life, the audience maintained its number. Alana could not help but marvel at the sheer volume of friends Wen Jing had cultivated. When one person departed, another arrived, including officers Alana knew were working the day shift. Finally, at two minutes until ten o’clock, the surgical team finished their work, and the patient was gently wheeled out of the operating room and through a back door.
Retiree 2.0 Page 31