“No problem,” said Venadrik.
“Yeah, there’s a problem, get this fuckin’ guy out of here,” said the man.
The guard stepped forward but Venadrik stepped back suddenly out of reach.
“No problem, I said.”
Venadrik backed away slowly, smiling, his hands thrown up casually, and left the restaurant without trouble.
***
A few days later Venadrik waited outside of one of his father’s mistresses’ apartments. Eventually he came out, disheveled, in his personal energy bubble, flanked by two guards.
“Father.”
He stopped. His guards stepped forward but he held up his hand. There was nothing to fear inside his bubble. Bright rings glittered on his jewel-caked fingers.
“Fuck, kid, you’re gonna get yourself into trouble you keep showing up. What the fuck are you after?”
“Just one thing,” said Venadrik.
“And what’s that?”
“For you to acknowledge the truth.”
The man stared at him.
“Who’s your mother?”
“Sir, you don’t need to listen—” said the guard.
“Never mind. Who’s your mother?”
“She worked in the—”
He trailed off, suddenly unsure of himself and hating it.
“You don’t even know do you, you little fuck? You come out here with some bullshit scam and you don’t even have your shit together—”
“She worked in the Southern Lights district when I was—small,” said Venadrik.
The man’s face darkened. Then he smiled.
“You’re a whore’s kid? Look, you little bastard, when I walk through those doors my ghost autosigns a contract that what goes on there, stays there. And it also says a whore’s kid is her own fucking problem. Now get the fuck outta here. I don’t give a shit who you are. I fucked a ton of those bitches. They all get what’s comin’ to them.”
Venadrik stood for a second and then launched at the man, roaring, “I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you.”
He hit the energy bubble and it burned. He bounced back and the guards grabbed him, wrangling him with their superhuman strength. His father laughed, shook his head and started to walk away.
“Teach this little bitch a lesson. Show him where he comes from and where he belongs,” said his father, casually over his shoulder, as a light-limo dipped down gracefully to the curb to pick him up.
The guards went to work on Venadrik, spraying anti-nano powder in a dark mist to cover their tracks and hide from any wisp cameras. They beat him savagely and left him on the street as the scheduled evening rain started to stream down.
***
Venadrik spent a week in the public hospital, thinking. Doctors tried to talk to him. Police came and went, asking him questions. He said nothing to any of them, not a single word. He didn’t even look in their direction. He just stared at the ceiling as they tried to find out what had happened. He wanted to cut out their tongues. Why wouldn’t they just leave him alone? He just sat there, thinking about his father and the best way to bring him and the rest of the parasites down. All of them. Wipe them all out.
***
Venadrik started as a systems tech for the department at 22. He didn’t have much schooling, but he was a natural. He programmed a blood splatter algorithm for them on the fly and they hired him immediately. It was only a few years later that he’d discovered the files of Ripley, the master of disguise. He’d been writing a program that ran through psych profiles for the people who screened new law enforcement officers. It scanned the archived blackboxes of famous cops and criminals who’d donated them or been forced to donate them, looking for patterns that signaled cop or killer.
But it wasn’t until much later, in the warm summer in 2436, that he found the last piece he needed to make it all come together. He’d found that clue in the archives too. It made him think of the scorpion game his mother played with him. He could play games too.
Of course, the idiots wouldn’t see it, wouldn’t understand it, even if they were looking right at it. It took a godlike mind. It took the ability to see from a thousand angles at once. There was never a scarcity of idiots.
It came to him as a sudden flash, as he was walking down the halls of the prosecutor’s office, the images of it sudden and brilliant, like a divine vision, swirling, alive. He had to stop and hold on to the wall until the flood of images passed. When it was over he knew it would all come together. It would take time, but he was patient.
And he would make all of them suffer.
The Message
2458 Orthodox Western Calendar
5156 Universal Chinese Calendar, Year of the Dragon
Hoskin’s Apartment, Snowstorm Clan Roving Starship Settlement
“Get up.”
“What? Sugar?” said Hoskin.
Hoskin’s head hurt. He couldn’t remember much about the night before, just that he’d come home with the girl. Not a good idea, he thought.
Hoskin looked around, but he already knew the girl was gone.
His memory came back in chunks. She’d oozed some kind of drug cocktail, but he was too old to blame that. Scanners shoulda picked it up. Why didn’t they? Probably too much shit in that place to make a positive ID. He could have stopped her if he’d really wanted to. A quick internal scan showed no damage or compromise to his backbrain. He flashed a query at the apartment. Nothing missing. He’d play it all back later, but it seemed all right for now, except that he’d slept with her. That wouldn’t go over well if it got out. He’d have Quinlin go over his body’s logs and see if he could create a killbits script to counteract whatever she’d given him.
“Hey. You there? Get up now, you gotta see this,” flashed Quinlin.
“What time is it?” flashed Hoskin.
“4 am. You have to see this. Get the hell up, now. It’s all over the nets. Only a matter of time before it gets picked up by one of the major streams.”
“Show me.”
Hoskin squinted and jacked up his metabolism. His head cleared fast, but he’d pay for it later without drugs to smooth the descent.
“Just watch,” flashed Quinlin.
Strange, distorted imagery filled Hoskin’s innervision: flowers withering in time lapse; a red sun sinking, the evening light dying in a spasm of colors; floating bodies burning; streaming clouds; twisting psychedelic lights.
A distorted, robotic voice began to talk over the images. The voice was disconnected, inhuman, mechanical.
The center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed.
Then a pause, as the streaming clouds darkened and an electric storm exploded in false colors.
“Who’s he quoting?” flashed Quinlin.
“Yeats,” flashed Hoskin.
And then the voice began again:
“Oligarchs of the Snowstorm Clan.
“We are your murderers.
“Over the years we’ve watched you, your punishment of dissent, your crushing campaigns of disinformation, your destruction of those who oppose you, your suppression of the poor and the weak. You thought that you could concentrate power in the hands of the few without consequence.
“You were wrong.
“You cannot hide from us. Under everything that you have come to know and trust, something has been festering and growing, something you cannot comprehend, a reflection of your own hideous nature, a revolution, all under your feet. You may think that you can hide in the clouds, but we have already proven that we can get to you anywhere and that your wealth with not save you from real death.”
Hoskin paused the stream. “Wait, did he just refer to the Gilead murder?”
“Yeah. Gets worse.”
Hoskin started it up again.
“We are many. Where there once was just me, there are now more who have joined the cause. Who
can you trust? Every day another turns against you.
“When we were little momma taught us a game. You had to pick a bowl and under one of them was a scorpion. Pick wrong and get stung. Choose carefully, she said, and now we say the same to you. Where are we hiding? Friends. Employees. Servants. The man on the street looking at you strangely. Those closest to you. Your nurse. Your cook. Your nannies. It could be someone you’ve known your whole life. Where can you turn when anyone could be with us? What can you do when even your backup minds are destroyed?”
“There,” flashed Hoskin. He paused the playback.
“What?” flashed Quinlin.
“Another way he can get the keys to their backups. He just told us. The victims just give it up, ‘cause they know someone personally.”
“Right, or the vic records it somewhere insecure. Then a cleaning lady or a nanny picks it off. People never learn.”
Hoskin started the playback again.
“People of the Snowstorm Clan, we are not your enemies. The Plutocracy has enslaved you. Join us. Free yourselves. We are at war. Kill. You must kill. Be not afraid to kill the lion, for he will not hesitate to kill you. It has been left to us to punish them for their crimes. Freedom must be taken by the oppressed. Join me in creating a new foundation, a new world.”
The bizarre imagery faded slowly and new imagery filled his vision: the orgy in the orbital mansion.
“This has got to be real. Nobody else has this footage,” flashed Hoskin.
“I know.”
“How many people have seen this?”
Numbers, graphs and maps filled Hoskin’s eyes, showing the spread of the stream on the nets in time lapse. There were too many to count. Hoskin swatted the charts away.
“It’s everywhere. It’s a wildfire.”
The footage from the party was a direct feed from the killer’s eyes. He stalked through the party, his breath accelerated, heavy. The holographic imagery projected by his mask was like a thin film over his eyes or like an ancient CRT screen with burn in. As he looked at entangled bodies and masked revelers, red circles formed around their faces. File photos tiled off on the side of the killer’s innervision. Names in bright red drifted into focus under them.
There were senators, celebrities, cabinet members, Dynasty founders.
The killer turned to look in a hammered mirror hung from a tree, but all the video showed was a superimposed circle over his face. Inside the circle different faces flickered, a Spanish woman, a black man, an Asiatic man, a white woman. The faces changed every second.
“We’ve been on the wrong trail,” flashed Hoskin. “We’re not dealing with mob hits here. We got a few possibles. One, we’re looking for a killer who’s got money, someone who’s got the cash to buy people off so he can get close to his victims.”
“Or the maids and butlers just hate the motherfuckers they work for so much, they gladly help him knock off their masters,” flashed Quinlin.
“Right. Or he just charms them into helping him. They follow him willingly. Some kind of cult leader. And either way, he’s killing for something more than a payday. These ain’t hits. These are ideological kills. We got a sociopath on our hands.”
“Nets are calling him Multiface.”
“Perfect. The media will eat it up. They don’t even have to think up the goddamn names anymore.”
Hoskin shook his head and started up the stream again. He watched the killer’s disguise closely. Around the circle of flickering faces something scrolled. It looked like letters or numbers.
“Stop. What does that say?” flashed Hoskin.
“Can’t read it.”
“Enhance, 27 to 12 left.”
The image cleared up and sharpened. It said “AM:831256.398”
“What is that?” flashed Quinlin.
Hoskin had seen that kind of code stamp before. It was something common. He thought about it for a moment and then it hit him. “AM. Amadeo. The Deos religion. It’s a marker for a scene from his life.”
Quinlin said nothing.
“You know it?” flashed Hoskin.
“Yeah. Not really. Don’t know much about it.”
“Here, I’ll find it.”
Hoskin did a quick search and pulled up a full sense stream. A searing pain ripped through his whole body as soon as he slotted the memory and he collapsed to his knees. He cut the stream.
“What happened?” flashed Quinlin.
Hoskin stood up slowly. “It’s a full sense stream. Incredible pain.”
Hoskin pulled up the metadata. “It says it was in the last days of the Prophet’s life, when he was tortured. They wanted him to give up his faith, renounce everything. Can you turn the feeling down and crank up the visual?”
“Yeah, hold on. All right.”
The visual returned, all black.
“He’s blindfolded here, according to the metatags,” said Hoskin.
Even with the sense streams turned way down, Hoskin could feel the ceaseless background tingle of intense pain.
A dehumanized voice said, “You know all of this can end.”
“How?” screamed Amadeo.
“Just make a video for us, something we can show to the people. We could make it up of course. But people would doubt it. We need you. Give us something we can broadcast everywhere, telling everyone you’ve lied to them. Renounce your ideas, your followers. You’ve never seen any visions anyway. Admit it. Your little lies are exposed.”
That was the end of the scene marked on the mask. Hoskin shut it down. He thought about the last line. “Your little lies are exposed.”
“I’ve seen enough,” flashed Hoskin. “I’ll be at the station in twenty minutes.”
“That’s not fast enough.”
“I know. Hold off the hyenas.”
Hoskin cut the connection to his friend. He got dressed fast: a black leather jacket, a bright yellow Havana style shirt, pants with utility pockets everywhere, because he had a feeling he might need them. There were already things stuffed in the pants: plastic bags, rope, a fission knife. As he dressed he went over everything he knew, looking for things he’d missed, when all of a sudden he spotted something glittering on the disheveled bed.
His eyes amplified it. Now he could see it wasn’t one thing but a fine silvery dust. He pressed his finger gently to the dust and turned it over to examine it. He stared at his fingertip as his eyes zoomed in, 10x, 20x, 100x. Up close the silver flecks looked like flowers with tightly petaled heads, studded with a giant diamond eye in the center and a leafless stalk that curled down from the bulb. He blinked pictures of it into his memories and a slice of his backbrain went to work on a pattern match. Carefully, he pulled out a plastic bag and gently used his thumb to drop the strange microscopic flowers into the bag for later study.
Quinlin flashed back in. “I forgot. I got a hit off the Dynasty darknets. They’re still looking for a killer. They think he got away.”
“What? How is that possible? How the fuck did he get out of that room?” flashed Hoskin.
“I don’t know. Those mansions are practically impregnable. I mean nothing’s invulnerable. We obviously snagged some video footage. But breaking in, killing a bunch of people and getting away? Never been done, as far as I know.”
“Maybe they lost him in the panic? There must have been thousands of people there. A stampede. Or one of the inside people helped him get out? Do they have a description?”
“I don’t know, man. That’s all I got. Just get the hell up here.”
***
When Hoskin got to the Farm, one of the younger cops told him Captain Clarenza Armitage was waiting for him in her office. Hoskin saw the kid’s slightly elongated head and knew he was from the Leptic Phyle. Leptics didn’t need to sleep, which meant the night shift was still here.
His head was starting to hurt. He ignored it. Before going to the Captain’s office, he made his way to the forensics lab in the basement. Th
e place was incredibly quiet, except for the sound of the walls breathing softly. It was stuffed with equipment, pattern matching smartcores, holographic projectors, DNA splicers, servo arms and surgery pods, and it was absurdly clean.
Brightly colored roaches moved in uniform paths along the floors and walls. Humanity had long ago given up on exterminating them, so they just sliced and diced them, made them florescent and hacked their nervous systems. They were cleaner than most sterilized equipment and they could digest anything. They were the lab’s garbage disposal and they kept the place spotless, eating every tiny particle that floated, fluttered or fell.
Azusa Newtype was there, surrounded by hovering screens and an army of docballs with octopus-like surgery arms. They were all focused on something he couldn’t see on the table, behind a dark privacy screen.
“What are you doing here so early?” said Hoskin.
“Only time I can get anything done, Luv.”
“I think you got roaches,” said Hoskin.
She looked up, as if surprised to see him, her eyes magnified by giant hovering lenses that made them seem twice their size. She tilted her head when she looked at him.
“Don’t you ever get tired of that joke?” she said.
“Nope. Got something I need looked at.”
“Oh, and you thought I would just drop everything and look at it right now?” she said, with a smile.
“That’s exactly what I thought. Here you go.”
Hoskin handed her the tiny flowers he’d found on his bed, then he turned to leave without waiting for her response.
“I love you too,” she called after him.
Hoskin headed upstairs. It smelled musky and heavy from too many bodies working too hard in one place. He thought he saw something move out of the corner of his eye. He turned but there was nothing there. His head hurt but he shook it off. Not getting enough sleep. Just keep going. When he got close enough, he could see there were a bunch of people stuffed in the Captain’s office.
Hoskin quickly sized up the room. There was the Captain, Quinlin, the Chief of Police, a tall man dressed in a stiff charcoal gray suit, and a fat man, his fingers crusted with jewels, surrounded by what could only be guards.
The Scorpion Game Page 12