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The Hands We're Given

Page 14

by O E Tearmann


  "Your Citizen Standing chips have been read, and we've generated a list of stores to suit your personal needs," the hologram continued in her quiver of enthusiasm. "Would you like to see it now?"

  "No," Kevin stated loudly and clearly.

  The hologram gave her false smile. "Have a wonderful day! Your parking fee has been deducted."

  "Thanks ever so much," Kevin replied dryly as the glass walls faded into innocent white again. He shot Yvonne a tight smile and sketched a bow. "Once more into the breach. Ladies first."

  Yvonne smirked and flipped him off as she stepped out of the parking space, which made him smile all the wider. He'd always been able to defuse her nerves with the old-world gentleman act he'd copied off vids. At least one thing still worked in their team.

  And then they were in the elevator down to Sixteenth Street, and the Grid really hit them. A wash of advert jingle blared out of a directional loudspeaker as they passed, following them until they were out of range and into the scope of a holographic pop-up that wrapped them in a wash of dazzling color.

  Kevin resisted the urge to shade his eyes with one hand. That kind of sensitivity to stimuli was as good as a sign reading 'Unaccustomed To Grid' hung around his neck. An oddity like that would be picked up by general security cams in a nanosecond.

  "Buy LaDouc today. You're worth it," a sensuous female voice whispered in Kevin's ear as if he was the only man on the planet. That was rather impressive directional mic work, he judged distantly, stepping through the hologram and out of the mic's reach. They'd even played with harmonics to make him feel an instant of pleasure. Very slick.

  He glanced at the little eagle decal discreetly tucked beneath the store's logo, reading the three letters on the glass. CSS. Of course. Anybody with tech that good could afford to bar anyone below CSS level from entering their stores.

  On the ground, arrows and dancing ice cream cones projected themselves on the concrete in blinking colors. 'This Way To The Best Ice Cream In Town! CAS Welcome!'

  Around him, people walked with their eyes on their feet, ears covered with 'buds. Those who could afford it covered their eyes with Eazee glasses running blocking programs. Others followed their social streams on their glasses or projected a wrap-around augmented reality holo from their tabs to mask what they didn't want to see with something they did.

  But nothing could completely block out the advertising bombardment. That was the point.

  At least he was having a better experience these days than he'd had when he was a teen. He'd still had the Wellness Chip shining blue in the skin of his wrist then, showing his place in society for anyone to see. The things might conveniently act as a Citizen Card and monitor your body chemistry to help you stay optimum in health and appearance, but they also sent Cavanaugh's corporate affiliates a constant stream of information on the stimuli that caused surges of cortisol or dopamine in your bloodstream. The Corporation had known exactly what attracted and repelled him as a teenager, and the pop-ups on the street had targeted him accordingly. It had been a nuisance.

  At least, they'd thought they'd known exactly what attracted him. He'd been lucky that his parents could afford hackers who could quietly check his Wellness feed and overwrite anything dangerous in his emotional data. So many people weren't so lucky. There were so many things to hide when you were a Cavanaugh Citizen.

  It had almost been worth the pain to be rid of that damn chip. The Fringe chopper who'd cut it out for him on that day from hell hadn't used nearly enough anesthetic. Kevin had been a mess that day. He'd been sixteen. He'd screamed.

  Kevin's feet fell into a brisk quickstep, moving him fast and easy through the crowds, using the trick he'd learned from his dad of remembering poems he'd memorized while he walked to keep his mind off the sensory overload. Ahead, a barker for a t-shirt and souvenir store was actually outside in-person, plucking at the sleeves and patting the shoulders of passers-by. "In here, best stuff in town, come on in!"

  Kevin took an easy step out of range, but Yvonne wasn't as fast. The man had her upper arm in his hand and was already into his sales spiel, but he dropped his grip the moment he got a look at Kevin and the expression on his face.

  Kevin had been taught in kindergarten how to talk to the lower standings. You were expected to be able to cow plebes by the time you were ten. He'd been good at faking the stance, the expressions and the body language he'd been trained to use as a member of CES society. He'd had to be. The lessons and his looks came in handy at times like this.

  The man swallowed and dropped his gaze. He'd picked up on the signals, and Kevin could practically read the thought that had flickered in his eyes: pissing off High Standing wasn't worth the grief.

  "Uh, sorry," the salesman grunted.

  Kevin nodded coldly and shepherd Yvonne away.

  "Wish I could pull that act off," Yvonne grumbled, rubbing irritably at her arm.

  Kevin shrugged, shoving his hands in his pockets as he let his body language relax. "It's all in the stance. Come on, stay close."

  They ran the gauntlet of Sixteenth street and into the blessed peace of the largest electronics store on the strip. At the clean white concierge desk, a clean white woman with white-dyed hair smiled. "Hello! What can we do for you today?"

  Yvonne smiled her peppy Grid smile, stepping forward. "Hi! Got a list to fill, we were hoping you could help us out." Pulling out her tab, she displayed her list. The store concierge studied it, typed. "Yes I think we have everything, would you like it delivered?"

  "No, thanks. We're picking up today."

  "Of course," the store concierge agreed with another plastic grin. "Would you like a secured purchasing container coded to your personal Citizen Cards?"

  "No, thanks," Yvonne chirped, "We're not all that worried."

  The woman smiled her acknowledging smile. "One moment please, I-" then she paused, glaring at the rattle of the doors.

  Kevin resisted the urge to glance back at whoever had tried to enter and found themselves locked out. He wondered momentarily how long it had been since their Citizen Standing had dropped and the stores they'd always gone to had begun to read the information on their Citizen Card that labeled them an unfit consumer and locking them out. Was this the first moment they'd realized?

  He didn't look back. It'd be cruel to add to their humiliation.

  The concierge smiled another fake grin. Holding that expression had to hurt by the end of the day. "Excuse me. I'll have everything right up."

  Two minutes later, a shelf-stocking employee came hurrying up with their boxes. Kevin took two and tucked them under his arm. "Thanks very much."

  He handed over his Citizen Card, his pulse jumping. He knew he'd done the code properly. He'd disconnected the CSS couple's actual bank account, borrowed their credentials while they were staying in the Vail Resort Complex and re-connected them to a false bank account that fooled computer systems into believing they'd received money. But there was always a chance the hack had been detected.

  He forced himself to breathe normally. If the store's monitoring systems picked up an overly fast heart rate and respiration, they'd be more carefully scrutinized by security.

  Nothing to see here, he willed silently, just another consumer.

  The card binged, sliding back out of its slot.

  "Have a nice day," the store concierge added sweetly.

  And they were out on the street, back in the noise, carrying all the hardware they'd need to update their slicktarp and their computer system against EagleCorp's newest detection work.

  At the thought, he turned his eyes up Sixteenth, away from the looming bulk of the EagleCorp building squatting a mile down the Esplanade.

  "One more stop," Kevin remarked, raising his voice over a sneaker hologram's loud music as they walked through it.

  In the car, Kevin watched his base mate carefully. "Ears bothering
you?" he asked quietly when Yvonne dropped her head back against the headrest. She closed her eyes. "Yeah. Bit. Least it was short."

  Kevin nodded. "If you do start feeling the 'buzz, let me know, will you?"

  Yvonne smirked, eyes closed. "Yes, Dad."

  Kevin smiled despite himself. Pulling out his tab, he put on Yvonne's favorite band by way of apology as they rolled through traffic.

  Idly, he watched out the windows as the cityscape crawled by. Moving south on Broadway, they left the fashionable areas around the Capitol and the gated employee communities of Cavanaugh Creek, The Village and Eagle's Nest. Used car places, CAS and CPS grocery chains and restaurants, strip joints and lower-standing housing areas spread out ahead, segregated into Corporate-affiliated neighborhoods. By the time the Go car turned onto Quebec, the neighborhood had really gone downhill.

  They parked their Go car inside a garage. As an added protection Kevin set the vehicle's Hands Off feature and stepped away, his skin prickling as the machine electrified its metal surfaces.

  "Let's see how Jazz is feeling."

  The contrast between the store they'd been in and the one they now entered couldn't have been more marked. Jazz saved money by keeping the lights low. Shadows hugged the walls, shades drawn to block out the hot sun. An old AC unit fought to keep the reconditioned tech cool enough to function.

  Kevin idly glanced through the wares. All of them had the required 'TechoCo Certified Pre-Owned' sticker on them, but he was fairly sure that Jazz was finding ways to register her revamped machines without paying the royalties to TechoCorp. Good for her.

  At the desk, a woman raised her dreadlocked head lazily, eyes studying them. "Hot day," she remarked.

  Kevin nodded. "Looks like there's a storm coming in, by the way."

  "Best to get inside," the woman behind the counter remarked blankly.

  Kevin held her eyes. "Mind if we come in out of the dust?"

  Jazz's black eyes twinkled. "Hey man. Way you act, I always half think you're a fucking mimic faking me out, you know that?"

  Kevin put a hand over his heart theatrically. "You wound, madam! I'm emotionally crushed!"

  Laughing, the techie stepped out from behind her desk and gave him and Yvonne quick, one armed hugs. "How you guys been? How's the new program working?"

  "Well it got us into a Sunshine Distributions Center, so I'd say pretty awesome!" Yvonne replied with a grin.

  Jazz blinked, her face blank. "You're shitting me."

  "Did the run this week," Kevin replied with a flourishing half bow.

  Jazz glanced between the two Wildcards. "You people are fucking nuts. Seriously. Fucking nuts."

  Kevin shrugged, his grin boyish. "Business as usual. You get us code and we'll put it through its paces. Speaking of which, I'd heard you might have a new buying reroute program in the works?"

  Jazz eyed him for a moment that stretched just a little too long for comfort. "Got something," she admitted finally. "Gonna cost you though."

  "Fair enough," Kevin agreed with a nod of acknowledgement. "Let's take a look."

  Jazz glanced at the door. Then she turned her head. "Hey, Billie!"

  In the back room there was a small noise, and a gawky black girl stepped out. "Yeah?"

  The fear in her voice made Kevin glance back at his contact, but everything about Jazz was as relaxed as it had ever been over the last three years. "Watch the front okay?"

  "Sure," the girl agreed, scuttling to take the older woman's seat.

  "New hire?" Yvonne asked as Jazz led them down a short hall to her personal quarters.

  "Sorta," Jazz agreed, sliding into a car seat that had been retrofitted into a coding rig and bringing up her system. The screen flickered into life, bathing her face in green light. She put in two layers of passwords, bent her head to let her system scan her retina, then spat into an attached tube. The machine beeped its affirmation.

  This was why Kevin liked working with Jazz: she took the precautions too many people on the GreyNet skipped. Getting sloppy with the details was what got people killed.

  "Okay. Take a look," Jazz murmured eventually, and Kevin stepped in, reading through the code with narrowed eyes. Scrolling down, he blinked as he studied the algorithms and the subsystems.

  "Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Jazz, who do you have doing your code these days?" he asked in awe.

  "Who says this isn't mine?" Jazz demanded.

  Kevin countered the edge in her voice with a dry look. "Jazz, you're an amazing mech'n'tech, but I know your code. This is the work of a true artist. This is… Well, frankly some of it is miles beyond me. It's genius."

  "You saying I'm not that smart?" Jazz retorted.

  Kevin caught her eye with a level stare of his own. "Jazz, I'm saying I'm not this smart, and you know how I value my seat in the ivory tower. And I'm also saying that we'll most definitely buy. What's the coder's rate?"

  Jazz snorted. "Too low. Stupid kid sold me this work for a thousand."

  "Shit," Yvonne whispered.

  Kevin nodded. "We'd be willing to offer six thousand, on two conditions."

  "Yeah?" Jazz asked, shoulders subtly tensing.

  Kevin forced his body to relax. He wanted this, but he knew the game. Too much eagerness would only raise the price, and they needed that money. Blake was going to have his hide for six thousand as it was. "That two thousand of the fee goes to the original coder. And I get introduced to them."

  Jazz stared at him for a long time, chewing the inside of her cheek. "I can do the first. The second? Nope."

  "Why?" Kevin watched Jazz's face as he asked the question, reading her reactions. What was this hesitation over? That wasn't like Jazz.

  Then he got it. "You don't want the coder getting involved with us. You said the kid. How old are they?"

  Jazz looked away. "Too young for this shit," she muttered quietly. "So back off." Standing, she shut down her system. "Get your card out and let's trade."

  Kevin's heart quickened. "Jazz, this kind of work is valuable. If the kid's selling their work in CPS areas, maybe we can subcontract with them and help-"

  Jazz's head whipped around fast enough to make her beaded dreads clack together as she turned a glare on him. Kevin almost took a step back.

  "Help the girl get labeled terrorist?" Jazz demanded. "Get a bullet or a cell? Shut that noise down."

  Kevin sighed. "I didn't say she had to join the Force to work with us Jazz. You didn't."

  "Yeah, well." Jazz turned away from him, refusing to meet his eyes. "You want this thing or not? Get out your card."

  Repressing a sigh, Kevin dug out his actual credit card, the one leading back to the Bengali accounts where the Force kept each base's funds through several dummy accounts and two countries.

  "Some things are worth fighting for, Jazz," he added, holding it out. "And people have the right to decide what they're going to do in this world. Will you tell her we'd like to set up a meeting at least?"

  The techie took the card and swiped it across the reader in her tab, typing furiously as she stared at the screen rather than looking the Duster in the eye.

  "Don't get all motivational poster on me, Kevin," Jazz stated eventually as the money transferred on the screen. "I like what you guys do. Don't get me wrong. You win someday and I'll be out in the streets dancing. But people around you get fucked up. This kid's fucked enough as it is. Not everybody's built like you people."

  "I'll bear it in mind," Kevin stated quietly. Pocketing his card, he gave the GreyNet techie a half salute. "We'll be off. Keep your head down in the storm."

  "Yeah," Jazz muttered as they left the room. "You, too."

  In the hall, Kevin snapped his fingers. "Yve, wait a moment."

  Turning, he stuck his head back into Jazz's code room, flashing his best grin. "Before we head out, Jazz, got any vids?"

  Event File 17
<
br />   File Tag: Operational Planning

  Timestamp:19:15-4-10-2155

  "Er, could you spare some of your time after duty hours?"

  Aidan raised his head from his operational planning brief, brow furrowed. "Hunh?"

  In the doorway, his logistics officer gave him a half smile. "It's a quarter of seven. If you're able to sign off anytime soon, I've got a lead I'd like to go over with you."

  Aidan ran a hand over his face, trying to clear his eyes. "Um, yeah. Sorry. What time is it again?"

  And what did a quarter of seven mean? Wouldn't that be some weird fraction?

  "Six forty-five," Kevin replied quietly.

  Aidan blinked. "Give me a second." He glanced at his screen. Kevin was right. Past six-thirty. How had he been working on this plan so long?

  "Problems?" the diffident voice in the doorway asked. Aidan gave a hollow laugh. "Yeah. Problems. We got word from the guys embedded in American AgCo-"

  "The Grapevine?" Kevin asked.

  Aidan nodded. "Yeah. We're supposed to get a group of eight off the Grid next month-a bunch of farm labor activists loud enough that American AgCo and ZonCom are putting them under house arrest-and get them started on their way out of the country. Anyway. Yeah. Signing off."

  He typed in his password.

  Behind him, Kevin cleared his throat. "I could take a look, if you're worried…"

  Turning in his chair, Aidan blinked at his officer. Did the man really think he looked that freaked? Maybe he did.

  He drew in a breath. "Yeah. Here, I've got the basics together." Bringing up the mission spec outline, he brightened his screen as the other man drew up a chair, peering at the words.

  "CAS level civilians?" Kevin asked, adjusting his glasses as he studied the information. "Oh. CPS too. And from the housing divisions of two different Corporations. Two children in the group, too. Tricky."

  "No shit," Aidan agreed dryly. "That's why it's taking so long. Personal vehicles are too easy to track, but we can't ask a family with kids to walk across the Grid. If we get them falsified Citizen Cards, they can use the midtown busses to bring the group out of AgCo areas of town and down into ZonCom, but that part of the bus system doesn't run out far enough to be any good to us. We need them out somewhere on I-70 or the back roads before it's safe for us to pick them up in manual rigs, but public transit doesn't go out that far and any shuttle service would log a weird trip to nowhere."

 

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