by Hugo Huesca
David noticed the agent had avoided saying anything that could confirm or deny David’s previous statements. Smart.
“Let’s hear the offer,” he said, with what he hoped would be a friendly smile.
“You do this work for us, your sentence is reduced to twenty years. Better than ‘forever.’”
David raised an eyebrow. He had read the same CIA Op Manuals John Derry had read during his own training. Selling those to the Corps had bought him his retirement. Until it was all confiscated by the courts, of course. Leonor hadn’t liked that at all. Their daughter’s university fund had gone from “yeah, just pick whatever remaining Ivy League school you want and we got this” to “Community college is looking real sexy right now.”
In other words, David knew the CIA was more generous than the police when making a deal. They wanted results, they didn’t care one bit about sentences. “And?”
John Derry’s eyes twinkled. “You contribute to the controlled resolution of this murder, help bring the criminals involved to justice, yadda-yadda. We put you in our ‘contributors’ program. Your sentence is spent helping us as a consultant. You’ll even get paid. Full benefits and all. That’s the entire offer, Mister Terrance, please don’t insult me by thinking you can get better than this.”
It was true. David knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. That’s what made him so wary.
Don’t look a free horse in the mouth, went the saying. Or something like that. It forgot to mention the etiquette when the horse was a gift from the same persons who put you in jail, and you had stolen from those same guys before.
That horse may be carrying an army of Greeks waiting to loot your city.
David thought it over. Helping John Derry could lead him to an even bigger mess than he already was in, believe it or not. All in all, his jail wasn’t the worst jail in the States. No one had tried to shank him for anything, or asked him to join a gang. That was nice.
Out there, he could get killed. Or worse. He would owe the CIA a favor anyway, and they always collected.
On the other hand, he still had his whole life ahead of him. His book wouldn’t last him that long. He had noticed the guards had taken his shoelaces the day he entered prison. He started to understand why.
“Alright,” he told John, “we’re in business. In fact, I think I can help you out right now.”
John Derry raised an eyebrow as he pocketed the tablet. A man of action and few words, then. David went on:
“The body, found in the bathtub? The killer didn’t murder him in the house.”
“Explain.”
“See, there’s no evidence in the house, right? No blood, no traces of a fight, but the corpse was pretty messed up. The police probably already know he wasn’t killed at home, I bet. They won’t realize how he was brought there without leaving tons of evidence, at least until tomorrow.”
“Don’t make me ask how you think he was brought there,” grunted John.
“Fine. I’ll tell you to show you my good faith. When you hack into a home’s network, you’re not just breaking into the camera’s feeds. You have access to the entire network. Television sets, temperature, the supermarket list.” David paused for effect. “The cleaning drones. The butler did it.”
John Derry looked like a sculpted sack of testosterone, but he wasn’t slow by any means. “The killer used the drones to clean up the evidence. He got them to place the body in the bathtub.”
Terrance nodded his head. “There’s more. I know how the killer got the body in the apartment in the first place. Same principle, really.”
The agent thought it over for a beat. Then he stood up, sending his chair tumbling to the floor. Terrance idly noticed how the plastic chair dissipated over the concrete like it was made of floating sand.
Huh, he thought, that’s weird. I wonder…
“The delivery drones,” John Derry went on. “A big one can fly a human body to a penthouse. If the security protocols are already compromised, the apartment’s own drones will receive it.”
David, still looking to the spot where the chair had dissipated, nodded. “Search yesterday’s fly-space records for any deliveries made to the Senator’s home. Now, there’s something strange here…”
His head hurt. The guard grunted and walked towards him with his stun-stick raised. He moved fluidly and something in David’s mind blocked any reaction, other than staring at the stick as it jumped towards his face, leaving a trail of sparking energy through the air. David was helpless.
Then John Derry raised a hand and the guard froze instantly, in a clearly unnatural way. The stick stayed in mid-air and David could see the pattern it had left in its wake.
Air didn’t behave that way with moving objects.
“No need for that,” John said aloud while David stared at the frozen guard, “I’m taking him with me anyway. Please, unpack him.”
Then he dissipated in very much the same way as the chair had.
The entire reality around David was next.
It was like being yanked out of his mother’s womb in a single second and without the nine months of pre-game beforehand. His throat hurt and he couldn’t breathe.
David Terrance woke up surrounded by a dark, plastic coffin. It smelled of medicine and shit. All around him, steel machines hugged his naked body. Several plastic tubes were installed into the coffin. They began at the coffin’s walls and ended at his mouth and… other places. He tried to shake himself free as panic and confusion began to duke it out in the most primal parts of his brain. The machines reacted by holding his arms, legs, and head in place.
He would’ve compared it to a nightmare, but he hadn’t ever had a nightmare like this.
Thankfully, the coffin opened before he had enough time to develop lifelong trauma. Light bathed him and made him squint in pain as he thrashed uselessly around.
A voice greeted him. “Seems like you’re out early, Mister Terrance. Welcome back.”
Half an hour later, David Terrance stumbled out of the jail’s infirmary and ran into John Derry, who was waiting for him. He looked just like he did before. Except, now that David wasn’t jacked up with hallucinogens, he realized the Real World had a higher resolution than the place where he had been trapped for the past year.
“Everything is in order?” John Derry asked him calmly.
Pale and shaking, David walked to the booth where a guard waited for him with his few remaining possessions. A wallet with no money inside (he remembered having at least a grand in there), his ID, his washed-out jeans, his running shoes, his t-shirt, and his PKD medicine. At least the prison had been kind enough to provide their own dosage of that one.
David didn’t want to imagine what the combination of those pills and the hallucinogens had been doing to his brain.
Perhaps he would be brave enough to think about it after the uncontrollable shaking had stopped.
“You guys are monsters,” he whispered, finally, to John. David’s mouth was dry and raspy and speaking was painful. Those were his first real words in a long time. He meant them.
He had seen rows and rows of plastic coffins when he had stepped out of the containment blocks. Rows and rows of dreaming inmates, unaware of the way the prison-industry was experimenting to save itself housing costs.
Cheap machines to exercise muscles and prevent atrophy. Tubes to feed them and dispose of waste. Drugs to make their brains unable to recognize the difference between the badly-rendered virtual jail and how the real world was supposed to look like. A crude video-system constantly shooting a string of laser beams straight into his eyes, following their every move, making him believe the images drawn straight across his pupils were the real world. Earphones for sound. Thankfully, the drugs took out his sense of smell and everything else.
David stared at his hands to make sure they were real. He bit a finger. That’s what pain felt like. Had he forgotten?
“Careful with that,” John said. “Wait until the drugs have worn off or
you may bite it off.”
David stared at the man like a starved-out animal.
“Why? Why do this to me?… To anyone?”
John’s face would’ve qualified him for a poker tournament. “The CIA has nothing to do with private prison, David. The official position is that it’ll let the inmates receive a better quality of life and better treatment —when the technology is far enough out there, that is. Obviously, they still have a few kinks to figure out.”
David considered trying to punch the agent and make a break for it.
Then he may end up in there again. The very thought made him want to puke, but the infirmary had given him some pills for that.
“Why me?”
John scratched his head. He obviously wanted to get on with his case, but he was a professional. “You don’t remember?”
“They drugged me…”
“Yeah. Do yourself a solid and don’t try to find out what they gave you. I think they’re still not sure how addictive the stuff gets over time.” He caught a glimpse of David’s face and coughed nervously. “Come, walk with me. Let’s get out of here. We’re on billable hours, you know.”
David followed the agent as well as he could on numb legs. The machines in his coffin had done a good job of preventing atrophy, but they were too cheap to prevent muscle loss. David looked and felt like he had just survived a long and debilitating disease.
They had even kept his head shaved.
The hacker and the agent left the building through the backdoor, through a tunnel made of cheap chain-link that extended across the length of the yard.
“After you lost your appeal,” John explained, “and there was nothing left to do but go to jail, you tried to escape to Mexico. You stole a kid’s laptop and hacked your way into a nearby hospital’s records. You faked your own death and you made a break for the frontier in the back of a truck. You got caught. The judge decided to ban you from coming close to anything electronic, then decided to send you to a max-sec jail. You ended up here. You remember?”
David tried to remember, but after the first trial, the one where he’d been processed for stealing CIA documents… all was scrambled. “No. The drugs.”
“They’ll have to work on those side-effects,” John said.
The end of the chain tunnel was in front of them. The door was entirely metal and was grafted in the middle of the huge concrete wall that separated the realm of the free men from the prison. As they drew near, a computer scanned them and determined both of the persons standing in front of it were actually allowed to go out into the open. The door opened for them and David caught a glimpse of the outside —and real— world for the first time in a long while.
A dumpster nearby, overflowing with trash. The back-end of a Thai restaurant. Several abandoned cars, rusting slowly under the naked sun.
Not exactly a painting. The air smelled of trash and rotting food.
David still thought it was stunningly beautiful. He felt like dancing around on the concrete. He took a deep breath, letting it all wash over him. Even the smells were a novelty. After all, there had been no sense of smell in his coffin.
The freedom was almost crippling. Where would he go from there? What would other inmates do when they walked free? Strip-club. Bar. Perhaps another go at a bank assault.
None of those options impressed him. He remembered Leonor walking away from him, taking Sarah with her.
That was for the best, he forced himself to think. Wouldn’t be fair to her growing up with a convict dad.
Where would they be?
“I phoned the police while you were in the infirmary,” explained John when he was sure David’s attention was back on Earth. He was reading from his tablet. “They just sent the report. A quadcopter drone glitched yesterday and the service drones in the Morrow’s apartment have been found with traces of blood and other biological material on them. Seems your theory was right.”
A black car was waiting for them a few meters from the entrance. John gestured towards it as he walked. David didn’t follow.
“Wait, you’re saying this murder stuff is still on?” David whispered in his raspy voice. “You put me in a fucking plastic can for over a year! I could be suing your—”
John raised his eyebrows. “Could you? You’re free because you agreed to work with us, Terrance. You’re still a criminal. If you won’t cooperate, I can have you back in that plastic can before you have time to piss your pants.”
The agent’s eyes were the color of steel and had the intensity of a knee to the gut. David lowered his gaze.
He could tell the CIA to stuff it. Perhaps he could actually sue someone for the Virtual Jail thing. He wasn’t sure of it. Hell, a part of him wanted to do just that.
On the other hand, the sky was a washed-out, polluted blue, but it still looked breathtaking to David. He would have time to get accustomed. And that cell… with nothing to do…
Twenty-something David Terrance would’ve jumped at the chance of rebelling against the Powers That Be. Thirty-years-old David Terrance was a broken man. The prison industry had found one hell of a deterrent for repeat offenders.
“Fine,” he walked towards the car, where John Derry was already waiting at the wheel. He got in the copilot’s seat and grunted when the hot leather made him feel like his ass was on fire. “Christ!”
“Welcome back to the States, Terrance,” John smiled sardonically and laughed.
He started the car and the prison was soon left behind.
“We have a meeting with one Capitan Del Rio. He’s the man in charge of the investigation we just took over. He’s going to give us his intel and switch to a secondary role. If we’re lucky, we won’t have to involve the police at all.”
“I bet he’s terribly happy about that.”
“Sure he is. He’s still billing by the hour, is he not?”
David Terrance wasn’t actually sure how the Police Department billed his employees.
“Hey,” he told the CIA agent, “mind if we stop by a McDonalds on our way?”
David had just found out what he wanted to do after getting out of jail. He was going to eat a huge, hot burger.
“Most peeps try for the strip-club,” mentioned John. “But the answer is still the same.”
They didn’t stop by the McDonalds.
Chapter 3
Capitan Del Rio wasn’t actually happy the CIA was stealing the investigation from his Department. One didn’t get to Capitan without an almost overprotective sense of bureaucratic turf. The CIA was very clearly stepping on his turf right now.
One didn’t get to Capitan without knowing when to shut up and swallow your pride, either.
“These are the files you need,” he told John Derry as he handed him a USB stick.
David Terrance eyed the obsolete piece of tech like it was made out of dirt and bamboo. Where did Del Rio think they’d insert that?
“You already deleted your files, I presume?” John asked with fake politeness.
Capitan Del Rio clenched his teeth in an almost psychopathic smile. “Of course I did; I know the procedure.”
“Fine. Just wanted to make sure. Not every Police Department is as careful as they should be with their own databases.”
“Maybe they should switch to paper.”
Now that would be even more ridiculous than a USB, David thought. He stifled a laugh and the Capitan’s eyes set on him like smoldering lasers.
“Did I say something funny?”
“Sorry,” David raised his shoulders and focused on the USB.
“Thanks for your help, Capitan Del Rio,” John told him. He offered a handshake that the Capitan was just a second too slow in accepting. “We’ll be in touch.”
“Sure you will.”
As they walked out of the Department, David turned to John. “How are we supposed to do this? That stick is ancient.”
“I’ll have the higher-ups set us up with all we need,” John explained. “They’ll send us an office.�
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“I hope they won’t just drop it over our heads.”
John smiled and said nothing.
Less than an hour later, their “office” had arrived. It was a black van with tinted windows. On its sides, David read “Pop’s Handwashed Laundry.”
“That’s the best name your guys could come up with?”
“The point is in avoiding attention, not in finding business. Now, get in.”
David didn’t bother to ask who was driving the van. The interior was cramped and hot, filled with the buzz of several machines. David saw one computer whose CPU was embedded in the aluminum fuselage of the van. Next, a row of screens that would’ve been expensive five years ago. A 3D printer. A normal printer. Another computer. More screens. Two uncomfortable seats, two desks, and a minifridge.
“Woah, the CIA doesn’t mess around,” David said, eying the place. “This junkyard would make a Saudi prince jealous.”
There were two types of government agents, at least in David’s mind. The first one was the type who loved self-deprecating jokes about his agency. The second was the one who hated those jokes.
John Derry was the second one. He grunted, pushed David with his shoulder and sat in one of the chairs. “Budget cuts. Still, they are not going to pull out the rug and the fine silverware to make a criminal feel comfortable.”
“Yeah, neither for you, hot-stuff.”
They began to sift through Del Rio’s files. Or, actually, John did and David watched. Technically, he couldn’t touch anything connected to a network, judge’s orders.
“Was Morrow working on something important?” David asked. Several e-magazines were pasted in the background-files.
“Yes. You missed the bulk of it in prison, I guess. Happened just after your case,” said John, “the Accountability Act, is what it’s called. Will force the corporations to use advanced accountability software to present their financial data to the public.”
That caught David’s attention. “It’s 2023, man. Do you think the corps are capable of killing a Senator because he’s passing a law they don’t like?”