Jupiter Rising

by Zachary Brown

  “There’s always a risk of indoctrination. That’s why I can’t abandon him.”

  “I dance between loyalties, remember? Are you sure it’s safe to ask me?”

  “Of course not, but the key word is ‘loyalty.’  You’re known to have a sense of honor. I can offer you something, and if you decide the transaction is worth it, you’ll follow through. You always do.”

  I flexed my hand under the hair tie and tried to smile. “This is a test.”

  Her smirk said “of course.”

  “I’m sick of tests. Last one got a lot of people killed, and I’m almost sure that wasn’t due to any failure on my part. Do you really have a brother? Were you ever in the CPF?”

  “Yes, I was in the CPF.  Yes, I have a brother. Yes, it wasn’t your fault.”

  I raised my eyebrows. She shrugged apologetically. “We’re not a monolith. We can’t control wildcards.”

  “Where’s your wildcard now?” I said with quiet anger. “I can take care of that for you.”

  She blinked as if startled, but not by my words. “Later,” she said briefly. She vaulted past me, over my bed, and through the open window. I moved after her as quickly as I could, but I was only in time to see her catch hold of the edge of an adjacent sill and swing to the nearest bit of temporary scaffolding. I took a moment to admire her technique, and also sniff at her use of grip shoes as she scrambled down the poles to the street and took off.

  The door opened. I spun around on my bed. Two women came in carrying grease-darkened bags that smelled of sugar, salt, and heaven. They looked surprised to see me and were about to speak, but then my stomach growled, and they laughed. I wasn’t in the mood to laugh yet, but I grinned.

  “Hi, I’m Amira. I’m guessing . . . you’re Lia Chaudry?”

  It was a guess, but the older one looked most like the regulars with her single braid and embroidered wrap. She nodded and waved a hand at her friend. “Yes, and this is Karina Wilmer. Glad to meet you, Amira.”

  I smiled at them. “Glad to meet you both.”

  7

  * * *

  “I need a little ink maintenance. Can you recommend a place?”

  Tech shop owner guy, who I now knew as Ted, thought for a short while. “The Gator girls should be able to help you out.”

  “The Gator girls, as you well know, are of old-fashioned corporate stock. They’re not hackers or sneaks. I’m not going to upset them by asking them to service my semilegal tats.”

  I wasn’t being facetious. In a few days, they’d made me family, or tried. I’d gotten used to being approached with a new query and a new name. “Are you sure you’re not related to Danielle Singh who worked with TLMax Inc on their inteldata project with the fourth-gen geosats?” “No ma’am, never heard of her.” “What about Nadira Singh? She was project manager on the last lunar mission before the Occupation. We started as programmers in VYN-8.” “No ma’am. I don’t believe any of my family were programmers.”

  Not exactly a lie. We had been trained to compete with programmers, not follow their rules. But at the hostel I followed the rules, kept Bugkiller locked up and hidden in my bag, and wrapped my hair in an ordinary dark-purple scarf. It had no embroidery, no tech, and no other purpose but to hide my hair and make me blend in with all the other scarves and wraps of New Jacksonville.

  Ted gave me a worried look. “Semilegal? You mean nonstandard tats?”

  “I’m looking for an artist,” I said vaguely. “Someone who doesn’t work in just the corporate or government areas.”

  His look morphed from worry to vague suspicion, but at last he gave me the contact for “a friend of a friend,” and off I went to a seedier side of town. I would get to the ink artist . . . eventually. My real goal was to walk about in some of the areas where the informal network felt most dense and organized. I had to push and hope that something or someone pushed back. I couldn’t let myself get distracted with thoughts of Jasen, but I felt stalled and frustrated. Three days after my arrival and there was still no hint of JP’s whereabouts, and the strange CPF conscript-deserter hadn’t bothered to return with her transaction offer.

  I went in lazy on purpose, probing noisily and making sure that anyone with a decent sneak level could hear me coming. The result was the same physically as virtually. People skirted my presence, which only made me madder. I’d come to New Jacksonville with hands up and waving, and no one could be bothered to detain me. Was the Singh name worth nothing now, or had the CPF taint permanently destroyed any chance I had at getting back into my old world? I arrived at the recommended place disgruntled and at a loss. The location was in a proper back alley, half-camouflaged by the fabric sheltering several stalls and carts along the road. The room was empty except for an assistant grooving in a bubble of personal sound as he did some tool maintenance, and the inker himself working on a piece of lab-grown hide stretched on a small easel. He could have been related to Ted—big with muscle turning slowly to fat, a preference for black clothes and bright headscarves, and a suspicious nature that made it difficult for him to make eye contact with strangers until he was sure they were clients.

  “What do you need done?” he asked, setting down his stylus and addressing the tats on my left arm.

  I raised said arm. “Got some scratches. They may have messed up the connections a bit. Think you can mend it?”

  He glanced at me very briefly, then went back to staring at my arm. “These are old.”

  “Yeah,” I confirmed. “I was fighting with something that didn’t want to be caught. Healing wasn’t a problem, but there’s been a 20 percent drop in processing speed.”

  “Why didn’t you use an extra dose of scar suppressant?”

  “Couldn’t. You know the risks.”  The suppressant stopped the immune system from rejecting nano-ink as foreign, but post-dose, there was an increased probability of developing cancer in that area.

  He took out some tools and scanners and had a proper look at the left tats, and compared them to the right tats to be sure. He shook his head. “This is well within the parameters of normal healing. You don’t need me for this.”

  “Well,” I said slowly, “there’s also the ink on my leg.”

  He quirked an eyebrow with weary cynicism. “You don’t say. Care to show that to me?”

  I undid my pants and dropped them so he could see the palm-sized design above my right knee. He didn’t flinch, bless him.

  “You’ve had this a while,” he noted. “It’s grown with you.”

  I took a second, more objective look at it. The skin was slightly raised along each line of ink, but I couldn’t see exactly what he was talking about.

  “Nonstandard ink costs extra to touch up,”’ he mused. “Twice the amount stated on my price list. Also buys my silence, you see.”

  I hesitated. I wanted to believe I could find Rai and get back to Orlando with no delays or problems, but if not, there would come a time when the CPF stopped paying me. “Maybe later,” I said, and put my pants back on.

  The assistant collapsed his sound bubble and gave me a strange look, part curiosity, part smugness. I immediately reassessed the threat level. Still just two of them. I edged closer to the door, casual but confident. I didn’t stumble, but I did blink when I passed my eyes over the hide in the easel and it sunk in that I was not looking at artificial hide, nor art in progress, but a segment of human skin from which the ink was being slowly separated and unraveled.

  Noises came from the street outside. I looked out the door and saw carts and canopies being packed up and moved out at speed. I took a deep breath, preparing to run. Not out, certainly not past the four enforcer types who were now entering the cul-de-sac. I quickly scrambled up a fence, hauled myself onto a roof overhang, and took a short leap from that roof to a nearby second-floor balcony. Lovely decorative bricks edged the building’s corners, and I gratefully stepped down them as easily as if they’d been a ladder. There was a cool, shady place under an awning, and I stopped there to s
tare at the shop window and watched the reflection of the people on the street. It was busy enough to feel safe and clear enough that I wasn’t hemmed in.

  “Well, are you going to buy something or not?” said a voice testily. A tall, grim-faced woman leaned in the doorway of the store, watching me as if I might break the glass and scamper off with her merchandise.

  I focused on the items in the window for the first time. Solar panel textiles, navigation tools and survival kits, everything your modern refugee could desire. “Yeah. You got a nano-ink stylus?”

  The woman glared at me. “We don’t encourage tats here.”

  “Okay,” I said mildly. I walked away, shaking my head in disbelief.

  I returned to the hostel. The concierge greeted me cheerfully and I tried to respond in kind, but she saw my slump and invited me to sit for a moment. I chose a solid, overstuffed chair with back and arms as thick as battlements and let myself brood. In minutes I heard a delicate rattle, and there on a side table was a cup of fragrant Darjeeling, kindly placed there by the concierge. I picked it up with a grateful smile and drank as she made small talk and looked at me with an auntie’s concern.

  “You know,” she said, “my job is not just to help newcomers to the hostel. I also help newcomers to the city. What are you looking for, Amira Singh? If you let me know, I may be able to help.”

  I put down the half-empty cup. “I can tell you what I wasn’t looking for. A sanctuary of retired programmers. Stigmatized nano-ink and ink artists of dubious reputation who collaborate with skinsnatchers. A thin, basic communications network which hasn’t granted me so much as a single message, and a rich, shifting, multilayered informal network which I can see but not touch.”

  “Oh, that does sound frustrating,” she agreed, smiling. Smiling, in fact, at my appalled expression and instinctive recoil from the liquid remaining in the cup.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll be a little suggestible, nothing more. You are so very guarded, Amira Singh, and this is a respectable establishment with no place for violent confrontations or illegal tech activities. This is the best way.”

  “Who are you with?” I mumbled, trying and failing to feel the danger this woman presented.

  “Amira, this is New Jacksonville. No one is really ‘with’ anyone. We define ourselves by who we are not with. For example, the CPF, the government—”

  “The Ships?” I guessed wildly.

  She laughed softly. “Oh, there are all manner of ships and boats and dinghies about. But no admirals. We are not very fond of admirals.”

  “Can’t have a fleet without an admiral,” I mused.

  “Exactly so. However, unlike the freedom fighters and demonstrators, we do not draw attention to ourselves and the Accordance does not pay attention to us.”

  I tried to move, to raise my voice, to have any kind of normal reaction to the conversation. I hated that we were in a public area with people going in and out, and I looked like I was merely having a friendly chat over tea instead of being interrogated against my will.

  “What about your rogue dinghies? What about people like Mawusi Rai?”

  She pressed her lips together briefly before speaking. “There will always be people who want to fight, or protest, or play soldier, or turn traitor. They become outsiders, able to see but not touch.”

  “I just want Rai,” I confessed. “Do whatever you want in your own time and your own way. I’m not here on CPF business. This is personal. I’m trying to save a friend’s life.”

  She gazed at me with teary eyes. I had never felt more unnerved in my life by the weight of so much pity. “Amira Singh. I’m sorry. You have a reputation for honor, but so do we. Remember that.”

  A new presence moved at the edge of my field of vision. I thought I could turn my head, just like I could get up and walk away any time I wanted to . . . but I didn’t want to.

  “What have you done to her?” JP said.

  “What the hell took you so long?” I whispered.

  “I need her to come with me. Can she walk?” JP continued, ignoring me.

  “Of course,” said the concierge. “Just tell her to follow you, but mind you don’t take advantage.”

  JP sighed. “Come with me, Singh.”

  I stood up. I was steady on my feet, but my will was detached from my body. JP looked me over anxiously, then silently questioned the concierge with a worried glance. “Come,” she said again, and stepped slowly toward the door, watching me. I matched her pace and we went by tentative degrees out of the hostel and into a waiting car. JP spoke quietly to the driver and then settled back, not so much ignoring me as avoiding me.

  My will was still scattered, but my brain was working. The city center had public transportation along the main roads, and people used hoverboards, scooters, and plain walking for the alleys and tracks. A car meant a location outside of the center, where the old roads still made sense and the suburbs, though cramped, were not yet chaotic.

  The car turned into the driveway of a residence. Large grounds, small bungalow—strange, as if the owner had intended to build a mansion but was sidetracked by the tiny detail of alien occupation of Earth. In fact, that was probably exactly what had happened. The driver left us at the front door and disappeared into the dusk. JP took my arm and pulled me inside. I leaned against the wall and blinked slowly as the lights came up to show a living room with bare walls and empty floors.

  “Where are we, and why did you take so long?” I asked again. In my head I was screaming demands, but my voice stayed even and unconcerned.

  “I got delayed,” she said angrily. “I’m sorry, Amira.”

  That was the second person to tell me sorry in less than an hour. My sense of detachment began to fade. “Why?”

  “Jasen is dead. They executed him the day after you left. They’ve been interrogating IT, Procurement, Transport—it’s a mess right now.”

  “Devlin and Ken. Didn’t they tell Anais to wait?” I was trying to yell, but I wasn’t there yet.

  JP scoffed. “Trust me, this is far, far beyond Anais. Don’t waste time blaming him or your friends. The Arvani wanted blood and they got it.”

  “Standard procedure,” I said sadly. My emotions were reconnecting.

  “What?” JP was startled, probably surprised that I was finally shedding the zombie state.

  “Standard procedure for the Ships. There’s always a designated scapegoat to take the fall and move suspicion away from the majority.”

  JP watched me as I spoke, her hand over her mouth. She drew it away and said, “But Jasen didn’t belong to a Ship.”

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s a principle of collective survival. Anyone who’d read my grandfather’s writings would know about it.”

  “That’s right.”

  I faced the direction of the new voice. A man with close-cut, graying hair and untidy stubble stood in the darkened doorway leading from the living room. His black silk shirt and black wool suit were both expensive and worn, hinting at past prosperity. I extended the theory of the grounds and bungalow to the person. Probably a billionaire before the Occupation who’d opted for a quiet retirement in a modest hideout rather than rail against the new world order.

  “Amira. You don’t remember me.”

  I came closer, frowning. He smiled and waved his hand. I saw the scars like raised welts, signs of nano-ink removed from skin under less than ideal circumstances.

  “Not that I expect you to. I met you when you were very little, a few months before I left New York for good. I knew your grandfather. He made quite an impression on me. My name is Alessandro Russo.”

  “Aren’t you hot?’ I asked foolishly, not yet recovered from that damn Darjeeling.

  He rolled his shoulders under his suit jacket, which had clearly been made when his back had been broader. “I have a . . . condition. I feel the cold easily, even in Florida. Or perhaps I can’t let go of the good old days.”

  His eyes . . . I did recognize those eyes. The Russo family,
where the bosses wore all black when on business. “Russo. Jasen was your son?”

  “I have no sons,” he corrected with a haste that had some emotion behind it that I could not identify. “But yes, Jasen was family.”

  “Mister Russo wanted to see you,” JP mumbled almost guiltily. “Can we go now, sir?”

  He gave her a sharp look. “No. Not yet. Amira, I swear on my honor, you may consider this a place of sanctuary. Trust me. There are things you must know.”

  JP’s expression was not reassuring. The guilt was there, but there was also fear—not fear of our present situation, but fear of what I was about to learn. Pure curiosity woke up the last drugged bit of my willpower.

  “Lead the way, Mister Russo. I have no reason to trust you, but honor is the only currency we have these days.”

  He smiled in approval. Then he turned to go into the darkness of the inner house, and I almost choked on my own breath. Tubes and wires ran from the back of the black jacket and trailed along the floor to some unknown connection.

  JP watched my reaction impassively. “Go on, Singh. Don’t falter now. I know you’ve seen worse.”

  8

  * * *

  JP was right. I had seen worse. There were sneaks who grew so absorbed in their work, so convinced that it was essential, that they constructed elaborate cyber-support systems to enable them to work faster and longer.  At least Russo could still walk and talk, and his body hadn’t atrophied much. I knew many cautionary tales of sneaks discovered and cut loose from their life support, unable to scream, unable to run. Then there were those who were hidden too well and died when their power and nutrient feeds ran out because their caretakers had fled or been killed. A few tried out mobile tank designs like the common Arvani style, but the best sneaks were real-life con artists, escape artists, and runners who’d never let a tube or wire tie them down.