The Scorpion Game

by Daniel Jeffries

  “Don’t move,” she screeched.

  “Momma don’t,” he screamed, tears exploding from his eyes. His arms hurt so bad.

  “Don’t you move.”

  She yanked the pot up again.

  “Please momma. Don’t.”

  “You will learn your lesson.”

  She stood over him, as tall as a starscraper, with the steaming pot.

  “I’m sorry momma. I won’t ever do it again. I promise.”

  “Sorry isn’t good enough. Other children are wicked and corrupting. They will cheat and hurt you and lead you down the path of death and horror.”

  She jammed the pot down again, grabbed his arms and held them to the sides. She had the perfect leverage on him now. He couldn’t move as the searing sides of the pot annihilated his skin, the skin bubbling and melting like the cheese in the macaroni. He screamed and shook wildly, an animal in agony, but he couldn’t break free. He started to black out. He couldn’t see anything except bright gold sparks. It was like someone was busting flashbulbs across his eyes.

  “I’m sorry momma. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I just wanted a friend. I’m sorry.”

  The pain whited out his other senses. He couldn’t see or smell anything. All he could feel was fire and burning, searing, blinding pain. Finally, mercifully, his mind went wavy and he saw the black lights and collapsed, unconscious.

  Later, though he didn’t know how much later, she woke him with vicious slaps and made him eat the whole pot of macaroni with his quivering hands, the skin still hanging from his arms in ribbons.

  Castles in the Sky

  2458 Orthodox Western Calendar

  5156 Universal Chinese Calendar, Year of the Dragon

  Gilead Dynasty Orbital Mansion, Snowstorm Clan Roving Starship Settlement

  Like ascending spirits, Dante Hoskin and Sugarhouse Quinlin rode the column of light up and up through the clouds, their aircruiser’s red police lights flickering in the dark sky. The tractor beam bent and swiveled, elegantly directing their car around the satellite villas that surrounded the orbital mansion like small moons.

  Hoskin hated being out of control of his own vehicle, but you had to pass through a web of security to even get near the mansions. Anything unauthorized, even police vehicles, that got too close would get shot down or captured by the house defense systems. By law, the orbital mansions were sovereign mini-nation states.

  Quinlin was finishing a smoke. He took a drag and blew out a deep red stream.

  “Whadda we got? Whadda we know?” said Hoskin. He wore the same clothes he’d had on the day before, the same clothes he’d slept in.

  “We don’t know anything,” said Quinlin, who wore a dark black suit that shimmered subtly and a bright blue tie.

  “How the hell you find time to get dressed like every goddamn day?” said Hoskin.

  “I make the time,” said Quinlin.

  “You need to focus on what matters.”

  “The little shit matters, right? Who said that?” He stabbed out his cigarette.

  Hoskin didn’t say anything, but he knew Quinlin was right.

  Their car was descending now, coming up on the landing field, the clouds rolling back to reveal the floating castle. Just beyond the landing bays, a series of rolling gardens appeared through the haze of swirling clouds, all of them meticulously sculpted by floating gardenballs and studded with living sculptures, silver trees and cascading waterfalls. They swept back towards a massive house, its spires, verandas, porches and windows seemingly infinite. Hoskin couldn’t see where the mansion ended. It went on forever into the pulled-cotton clouds.

  “Some people just got way too much,” said Quinlin, with disgust. “Look at all this. We got people with barely enough to eat and these guys livin’ on a fucking floating island.”

  “I don’t worry about what I can’t change,” said Hoskin.

  “This fucker probably stole half of it and took the rest off the back of the people who worked for him.”

  “Save the fuckin’ politics for later. Let’s go over this,” said Hoskin. “We know something. We just don’t know what yet. Come on, whadda we got? Whadda we know?”

  “We got a dead whore. We got a conservative Senator with a body fetish,” said Quinlin.

  The crime scene photos and intel swept up before their eyes as ghostly holograms.

  “What else?”

  “We know the hooker burned the blackbox thanks to Azusa,” said Quinlin. “We got molecular or atomic signatures all over the room from a hundred people. Makes it hard to pin anything on anyone. And the guys who attacked you were Mountain Snake enforcers.”

  “Right. So what’s that tell us?” said Hoskin.

  “Tells us it was probably a hit,” said Quinlin. “Senator pissed someone off or owed somebody. Triads took him out.”

  “Question is why? That’s the key. Who’d he cross?”

  “Senators got lots of enemies.”

  “What else?”

  “We know we can’t get near the Senator.”

  Councilman Turnbull’s face appeared before them.

  “I’ve been digging around and word is they’re having trouble with his secure store,” said Quinlin. “They’re saying maybe he hadn’t backed up his box to secure storage in a long time. He didn’t leave no code. They can relife him up to the last time he uploaded his memories, but they say it was over a year ago he backed up. Or maybe worse.”

  “The girl was smart enough to know we could play back what happened if we got our hands on the box. Who taught her that? Someone who knows something about forensics, about what we do and who could get access to amelytic acid. You can’t just synth that up or pull it off the Tangles.”

  “Sure you could. Any hacked synth. I could make it up in no time.”

  “Right, but when did this girl have time? She’s fucking six, seven, eight times a day. She’s under total lockdown. She knows how to hack a synth? She knows how to dig up the recipe off the darknets? No way she didn’t have help.”

  “Right. So we lean on the Triads? Figure out who wanted the Senator dead?”

  “Probably our best bet.”

  Their car touched down gently onto the landing pad and the doors popped open. Their holograms flickered away and the images saved themselves to their backbrains. Hoskin burst out, ready to work. Three security drones slashed them with beams of bright blue light.

  “Authorized,” said the head drone, its head covered with red authority patches, its body elongated and gnarled with white exomuscle.

  “Detectives,” said the head drone. “Welcome, please follow us.”

  The two detectives and drones jumped into a waiting hoverpod that took off under its own power. One of the drones typed something on a lightpad and a holographic illusion of a row of super-tall hedges disappeared, revealing an energy gate formed by a giant sculpture of upturned hands, as if held up in divine rapture. Between the hands, the coat of arms of the Gilead Dynasty that owned the floating palace glowed brightly in a golden ball of light. The energy gate flickered off and the hoverpod zipped through.

  “The pearly gates,” said Quinlin.

  Hoskin didn’t laugh. They switched to innertalk with heavy encryption.

  “What else we got? What about the girl who met up with you?” flashed Quinlin.

  “Nothing. She’s a ghost. Address in the q-net she called from is gone. A one time. You check all the footage?” flashed Hoskin.

  “Yeah I saw it all, everything your eyes spit. Something not right there.”

  “Exactly. What whore has holostealth?”

  “Uh, none.”

  “That’s probably an overestimate. We need to find her. She’s not all she seems to be. She knows something she’s not telling us.”

  “Got the same feeling.”

  Pictures of Sakura appeared on their collective vision. Outside of the car musical silver trees sang softly, serenading the detec
tives, while the sculptures of relatives and ancient gods moved around on tall pedestals.

  “I got CityGrid Video IQ hunting her down, but there’s a lot of matches to work through,” flashed Quinlin. “As far as we know, she never even worked at the Willows, but that’s no surprise. The auditbots found at least half the girls there don’t officially exist anywhere. Vaseline said she’d been there for years. What do you think Vaso’s got to do with it?”

  “We have to find her again. She’s our only real link to anything. I shoulda tagged her. Stupid on my part. And Vaso, he doesn’t know shit. He’s too stupid to be involved. Guy’s a moron. That guy calls a hit on a Senator? No way. Someone higher up. If anything they kept him in the dark. He goes down it means nothing to them. Just a pawn.”

  “We’ll have another go at him when we get back.”

  “Waste of time. He’s knows dick.”

  “And what about this thing up here? Related?”

  “Gotta be. What did the girl call ‘em? Kingfish? Two Kingfish is too much of a coincidence. Maybe the Senator and this guy were into something together that went bad?”

  “Then like I said, we know nothing,” flashed Quinlin. “Maybe the girl ‘ll find you again.”

  “And what about this thing up here? Whadda we know?”

  “Word is, there’s more than one body, but the name they’re giving out is Gabriel Gilead. Head of the Gilead Dynasty. Energy and transport baron. Was Titan B&E dean for a while. Started Lyon Heavy Construction, built half the original wormholes in local solsys, but stays off the radar mostly, from what I can find.”

  “Not anymore,” said Hoskin, out loud.

  The security drones turned to look at him.

  It’s a Dead Man’s Party

  As soon as they were in the house, Hoskin started detecting port scans against his backbrain, probably Dynasty security looking for vulnerabilities that would let them hack his and Quinlin’s innertalk encryption.

  “You got all your updates done?” flashed Hoskin.

  “Yeah. I’m good. I feel it too. Probably looking for what we know,” flashed Quinlin.

  “Right, which means they don’t have shit.”

  A tall man with a featureless face of white pearl stepped up to greet them. He had no eyes, no mouth, no nose. Nothing. He wore a pinstriped business toga.

  “I’m Corealis, head of Dynasty security. I’m heading the investigation,” said the faceless man. His voice seemed to come from all over his body, dislocated and strange. “Follow me, and don’t touch anything.”

  They were standing in a large entranceway with forty-foot-high curved ceilings, studded with jewels, surrounded by swirls of gold. The walls were wood and hand-carved with ridiculously intricate patterns that must have taken years to finish. Corealis waved his hand and a door appeared in the ornate wall, a Tangleport door. Personal Tangleports were incredibly rare and expensive and took a lot of juice to power. The three men stepped inside the port and the familiar all over itch of instantaneous Tangle travel hit them. Seconds later, they stepped out of the sizzling door.

  The first things Hoskin noticed were the stained glass windows and the brilliant streams of colored light pouring into the room from every direction. The windows stretched up three or four stories on all sides of the massive ballroom. The colored light saturated the thick, threaded columns and soaring archways. Stenciled with ancient imagery, the stained glass windows showed scenes of knights on stunning white horses, swords stretched and gleaming, women in flowing dresses, their gold hair long and streaming, their heads crowned with dazzling stars. Blood dragons sliced through the sky and castles stood on hills in the distance, surrounded by swirls of mist. Looking closely, Hoskin could see the images move, slowly, subtly, the clouds in the stained glass sky drifting and sliding, shifting the long shafts of light.

  “Get shots of everything we can. I’m feeling a stonewallin’ coming on,” flashed Hoskin.

  “Getting that feeling myself.”

  Their eyes went to work, blinking it all in.

  The perfectly manicured designer grass crunched under their feet, the dark green spiked with splashes of silver and gold. Shafts of colored light glittered off the jeweled grass. Goldtrees, bent to the will of genetic sculptors, grew in scattered bunches throughout the room, many of them wound around the massive columns that held the room up. The ballroom swept back so far Hoskin couldn’t see the end of it. A sonar ping told him the room stretched on for about three miles. He knew these places were big, but until now he hadn’t known just how big. Mechanical fairies with dappled butterfly wings buzzed around overhead. Clusters of them cluttered around preternaturally colored flowers that were spattered throughout the soft grass.

  “You could fit a thousand houses in here. Why does anybody need this much? Makes me sick,” flashed Quinlin.

  All through the room were various nooks carved out for people, lounges of bright velvet or leather, high backed chairs, bars that hovered, staffed by ancient, throwback servo drones that looked deliberately mechanical. Arabian-style tents covered in bright swirls were splashed everywhere around the room, cutting the huge space down into more manageable sizes for guests in the banquet hall.

  “This way, Detectives,” said Corealis, wending his way through the trees and around sculptures of knights whose eyes followed them, marking them as obvious cameras.

  Corealis stopped in front of one of the tents, surrounded by tall, thick trees that looked as if they were cradling it. The tent had multiple levels, connected by spiral staircases, bridges and verandas. The entranceway parted as they approached, and that’s when the smell hit them. Hoskin’s backbrain studied the smell and tried to put a time of death together based on its intensity.

  “This is as far as you go,” said the dislocated voice of Corealis.

  “Here we go,” flashed Hoskin.

  “Excuse me?” said Quinlin.

  “This is as far as you go,” said Corealis. “The crime scene is inside, but we cannot allow you to contaminate it.”

  Several more Dynasty Security personnel stepped from the tent, their faces blank like Corealis’, but colored differently, a symbol of rank. Warning lights lit up Hoskin’s innervision. Dynasty Security formed a wall between Hoskin, Quinlin and the door.

  “We’re gonna contaminate it? What the fuck are you talking about?” said Hoskin.

  “The Inter-Orbital Shared Intelligence Treaty—”

  “Are you serious? You’re really gonna trot out the IOSIT?” said Hoskin, squinting his eyes at the faceless man.

  “The IOSIT only requires that we bring you to the scene—” said Corealis.

  “That is a pretty loose interpretation of the—” said Hoskin.

  “This is our investigation and—”

  “Bullshit it is. We have serial homicides, which makes it ours,” said Hoskin, stepping towards Corealis. Corealis’ men inched closer. The warning lights flickered much more rapidly behind Hoskin’s eyes.

  “There is no evidence linking this homicide to the Senator’s recent and unfortunate demise,” said Corealis.

  “That’s really what you guys are going with, huh?” said Hoskin.

  “Also, any photos that you take will have to be turned over, to preserve corporate security,” said Corealis.

  “Corporate security? He’s joking right?” said Hoskin.

  “Yeah, only problem is he’s not that funny,” said Quinlin.

  “I know I’m not laughing,” said Hoskin. “You ever seen…what’s-his-name, they guy with the big ears, does that standup act—”

  “Now he is funny,” said Quinlin. “But you, you’re not funny. I mean you don’t even have a mouth, so—”

  “I assure you, I am not a comedian and you are not going inside,” said Corealis. “And you will turn over any photos you’ve taken.”

  “Pay attention. See everything,” flashed Hoskin.

  Nano alerts popped up on Hoskin’s innervision. His
body’s personal firewall flicked on and his pores closed up to protect him. He flashed a warning to Quinlin but he’d already done the same.

  “These guys are hiding something. And they’re gonna hustle us outta here,” flashed Hoskin.

  “Yeah.”

  “And they only need to let us see the scene for two minutes max under IOSIT. I need you to hit back at their network, see if you can find an unprotected camera, pull something off it. Go slow. Don’t trigger any blowback.”

  “All right, but I’ll need more than a minute.”

  “Leave that to me,” flashed Hoskin and smiled.

  Quinlin’s backbrain pulled up Nmap, version 923, and started a slow stealth scan of the surrounding systems, searching for any exploitable smartware. He started by footprinting, looking for nodes, anything with an expert system or a defense barrier. Hundreds and then thousands and then millions of responses flooded back to him. There were wisp cameras and mites everywhere. Almost every inch of the room crawled with microscopic, man-made insects. Their signatures scrolled chaotically on his innervision. It was almost as if everything at the microscopic level had been replaced by something man-made.

  While Quinlin scanned, Hoskin leveled a finger at Corealis and said, “What the fuck is going on here?”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about. We’re simply following—”

  “Don’t waste my time. You know exactly what I’m talking about. You and your people altered this scene and that’s why you don’t want to let us in.”

  Corealis said nothing.

  “What were your people just doing in there?” said Hoskin.

  “I’m under no obligation to answer any questions,” said Corealis.

  Several more Dynasty Security personal stepped from the tent. Hoskin’s warning lights blazed brighter, until he blinked them off because they were making it hard to see.

  “Where are all the guests?” said Hoskin.

  “They’ve already been questioned,” said Corealis.