The Machine Killer

by D L Young

  A sinking feeling stabbed at Maddox’s insides. “So you know about that.”

  Hahn-Parker nodded. “I was told.”

  He was told. Wonderful. Maddox had a sudden urge to down the rest of his drink. “Sir, I know what I did wasn’t exactly by the book, but—”

  “But it worked.”

  “Yes.”

  “It did indeed, Mr. Maddox.” Again the ponderous stare. “There’s something to be said for a results-oriented mindset. Ends often justify the means, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “They can.” Where was this conversation going? Was the man toying with him?

  “Mr. Maddox. Blackburn, if I may, what occurred today with those juvenile delinquents doesn’t concern me. If anything, it was a godsend, as it only reinforced my notion of how clever and resourceful you are.”

  All right, then, Maddox thought, now as baffled as he was anxious. If he wasn’t in hot water for the barely avoided datajacking disaster, then what was he here about?

  “I have an assignment for you,” the executive explained. “A task I believe you’re perfectly suited for.”

  Hahn-Parker paused, letting the words sink in. A task, Maddox repeated inwardly. A task I dragged you here at two in the morning to talk to you about, without specs, inside a chatter bubble.

  He had it now. Only one explanation made sense.

  “You want me to datajack somebody.”

  Hahn-Parker grinned. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  4 - Gravy Train

  “There’s nothing more despicable than a traitor.” Hahn-Parker frowned as he stared into his glass, then took a long swallow.

  The executive vice president sat across from Maddox, sharing the bottle of thirty-year-old single-malt scotch as he detailed a major breach of company security and how he wanted Maddox to help him resolve it. And as he did so, his plainspoken demeanor gave no indication he was discussing corporate espionage and felony-sized crimes. He might have been going over the details of a departmental expense budget for the lack of concern on his face and in his tone. Maybe the impenetrable wall of privacy put him at ease, Maddox thought. Or maybe the man had ice water in his veins instead of blood.

  It took some minutes for Maddox to adjust to his strange new reality, to the thin air of these dizzying heights he found himself in. The scotch helped.

  Two days prior, Hahn-Parker explained, a midlevel manager, angry over being passed up for a promotion, had stolen a small fortune’s worth of company biotech IP, then sold the information to a black market data broker, a man named Novak. The name didn’t ring any bells from Maddox’s past, but then he didn’t know everyone who dealt in stolen data.

  “How’d you find out about it?” he asked.

  “Loose lips sink ships,” Hahn-Parker said. “Our man had one too many at a local tavern, it seems, and he boasted about his deed to some woman, hoping to impress her, I imagine. He went on about how he’d one-upped Latour-Fisher and made himself rich in the process. Fortunately for us, one of our directors was sitting nearby and overheard.” The executive paused for a drink. “We brought the indiscreet fool in this morning. He made a full confession.” Maddox wondered how many pops from a shockstick it had taken for the man to spill everything.

  “Now the only loose end is our IP,” the executive continued, “and that’s where we can use your talents.”

  Maddox drank. “How do you know the broker still has it? He might have resold it already.”

  “Our turncoat swears he wasn’t working with our competition on this, and that this Novak person purchased the data with the intention to shop it around. If that’s the case, it’s reasonable to assume the broker is still in possession of our IP.”

  Maddox nodded. “If that’s true, he’ll hang on to it for about a week,” he said, “a week and a half at most.” Back in the day he and Rooney had worked with brokers dozens of times, shopping chunks of stolen data. It never took less than a week to get bids back from all the major buyers.

  “Then we must get to work quickly,” Hahn-Parker said. “We’d like our IP retrieved as soon as possible.”

  “Retrieved?”

  “Yes.”

  Maddox took a longer drink this time. “What about your backups?”

  The executive shook his head. “Unfortunately, there are none. This particular project manager was overly protective of his work. One might even say paranoid. He stored portions of his research on his own private, portable archive, unbeknown to the company, of course. This portable archive, and the company IP it contained, were handed over to the broker in person, traded for two suitcases of cash. We could find no trace of any the archive’s contents or any copies inside the company.”

  Maddox chewed on this. It was far from the first time he’d heard of such a scam: a malcontent employee secretly hoarding company secrets or sensitive data until they had a stash valuable enough to sell for a pile (or two suitcases) of money. Turncoats like these had provided Maddox and Rooney with easy work from time to time. They’d act as go-betweens for some straight-and-narrow corporati who’d managed to find them through the black market feeds. While they weren’t in the business of fencing stolen data—they were datajackers, not brokers, after all—for a handsome fee they were happy to connect some clueless suit with the right contact in the underworld. Good work if you could get it.

  Maddox shifted in his chair. “Why not just call the cops or the feds? Have some rhinos storm this Novak’s condo and get your IP back?”

  The executive nodded. “A fellow board member suggested as much. But let me ask you, if you needed to recover high-value, irreplaceable IP, would you select the police as your first recourse?”

  Maddox didn’t consider himself the ideal person to answer this question. Where he came from, nobody ever called the cops. Still, he got the man’s point. If this Novak was like most brokers Maddox had known, he already had the archive locked down tight, probably even booby-trapped with high-end countermeasures. Cops, even the federal ones, weren’t exactly the savviest technologists around, and they were as likely to destroy the data as recover it intact. If the IP was as valuable as the executive was claiming, he wouldn’t risk getting the cops involved unless he had no other choice.

  “Has anyone reached out to this broker?” Maddox asked. “Try to buy it back from him?” It would be the easiest, least complicated solution to the problem.

  The executive blinked. “That’s plan B.”

  Which implied Maddox was plan A, though it wasn’t clear how that made sense.

  “But a payoff’s easier,” he pointed out. “And a lot less risky.”

  Hahn-Parker swirled his scotch. “Why don’t you let me worry about the company’s risk, yes?” Underneath the polite tone, Maddox sensed annoyance. The highfloor corporati didn’t like being second-guessed. “I convinced the board to give you three days to recover the dataset containing our IP. If you aren’t successful—or if you choose not to assist us—then I’m afraid we’ll be forced to negotiate a settlement with this data broker.”

  For a long moment, neither man spoke. Overhead, the chandelier cast its low light over them. A fly buzzed around one of the candelabras. It reminded Maddox of the newbie datajackers from earlier in the day.

  “So,” the executive said, downing the rest of his drink, “can I count on your help?”

  Maddox didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what to think. A part of him was still reeling, still coping with the impossible trajectory of the past few hours.

  Staring at him, Hahn-Parker seemed to understand this. “I can appreciate how overwhelming this is for you. Take the next few hours to let all this sink in, and if I haven’t heard back from you by tomorrow morning, I’ll know your answer.” He pressed his thumb to the chatter bubble control. Green changed to red. The EVP stood and pocketed the device.

  “Good evening, Blackburn. And thanks again for coming.” He shook Maddox’s hand, then exited the room.

  When the door clo
sed behind the man, Maddox sat there for a moment in silence. Then he helped himself to a last generous portion of scotch. Liquid amber sloshed into the glass. He downed it in a single swallow.

  What a day.

  ***

  Think of all the things that can go wrong, boyo.

  Rooney had preached this to Maddox back in the day, repeating it like a mantra, every time they prepped for a datajack. You can’t cowboy it, his mentor warned. You can’t break into some company with no plan, thinking you were the shit, or some untouchable hotshot. Cowboy jackers might get lucky a time or two, but they never lasted more than a few runs. No, you had to think of everything that could go wrong, and even then there’d still be a dozen things you’d missed.

  Since the portable archive was, by its very nature, cut off from any digital connection, Hahn-Parker’s task would by necessity be an onsite job. Maddox hated onsite jobs. They were messy, clumsy affairs. You had to physically break into someone’s office or home or whatever, like some junkie looking for jewelry to hock at a pawnshop. And no matter how much intel you gathered up beforehand, something always got missed. An overlooked doorguard bot. A nervous neighbor who called the cops at the slightest odd sound or unfamiliar face passing through the lobby. Maddox had done a handful of onsite jobs in his time. None of them had gone off without a hitch. And a couple had nearly gotten him busted.

  Wired and unable to sleep, after the limo dropped him off at his building, he roamed the neighborhood with his hands in his pockets. The earlier drizzle had lessened to a mist, settling over everything as if a cloud had descended onto the floor of the City. Crowded walkways, flashing lights, the motley fried smells of food kiosks. The teeming clamor of the street, unabated even at this hour, flooded his senses, and he welcomed its familiar embrace. When everything else in the world went sideways, the street never changed, and there was comfort in that.

  He lit a cigarette. An ad reminding him to refill his tobacco supply appeared on the lower portion of his specs, fading away a moment later as he exhaled smoke.

  It wasn’t larceny in the strictest sense, of course. After all, it was the company’s IP in the first place, so he wouldn’t actually be stealing anything. He’d be recovering stolen goods. As soon as the thought struck him, he laughed inwardly at the half-assed rationalization. If he got busted, this technicality would hardly matter, since he’d have to rack up half a dozen felonies and datacrimes to reach the archive in the first place.

  He smoked and walked on. Energy soda ads popped up on his lenses. Cartoon animals sang a pet food jingle as they chorus-lined up the side of a nearby building. Beyond the lenses, the street’s neon kaleidoscope whirled around him, vying for his attention. Lost in thought, he saw nor heard any of it.

  When he’d first started with the company, he’d suspected they might have hired him to perform tasks exactly like this one. Illegal datajacking jobs, in other words. It was his specialty, after all, the skill he brought to the table. His “value-add,” as the marketers would say. In his former life he’d heard about megacorporations retaining their own in-house jacking talent, payrolled data thieves who’d opportunistically steal from competing firms when the need arose. The war for market share was fierce, and most companies viewed corporate espionage as a necessary evil.

  But after months of employment at Latour-Fisher, he hadn’t once met another person with his background or his particular skills, and the tasks he’d been given were no different than the ones his security analyst colleagues were assigned. Writing security scripts, patching weak spots in the company’s datasphere, and so forth. Maddox had long since dismissed the notion of corporate datajackers as so much gossip. Until today happened.

  He could say no, of course. Hahn-Parker had left that possibility open to him, though there seemed little doubt a refusal was tantamount to career suicide. You didn’t say no to an EVP, no matter what the question was. But Hahn-Parker knew Maddox wouldn’t say no, just like Maddox knew it himself. They both had known it from the moment he’d walked into that darkened room and sat down for drinks inside the chatter bubble. Whatever the highfloor corporati would ask of him, he was going to say yes.

  Because he had skin in the game now.

  The legit life, he had to admit, had grown on him. Over the past year, he’d become comfortable inside his corporate refuge, accustomed to his salaryman’s life. Sure, there were the constant snubs and rude reminders of his outsider status, but those were minor inconveniences, soft punches he could take without flinching.

  The company was an impenetrable cement bunker in a war zone. Inside its corridors, the brutal world he’d known as a child seemed like some distant memory. That one-room run-down with a leaky, rust-stained ceiling. A dented government-issue food fabber dispensing calorie allocations of tasteless, spongy breadcake. Weekly rhino cop raids, the heavy thud of armored footsteps in the hallway, flashes of gunfire under the door, his belly flat against the floor, hands clasped over his ears.

  Latour-Fisher Biotech paid him well. Not hover limo well, but well enough to afford a decent rental in a good building, to dine in four-star restaurants (five-star on special occasions), to buy nice suits. It was steady money, too, not the feast or famine scramble of a datajacker’s life. And he never had to worry about a cop busting through his door and shocksticking him.

  His impoverished childhood, his data-thieving young adulthood. Both seemed a million miles away now, and a million miles away was where he wanted to keep them.

  And he couldn’t deny enjoying the stature that came with working at Latour-Fisher. The respect he didn’t get at the workplace was more than offset by the envious awe of nearly everyone outside of it, when they learned the prestigious address where he worked Monday through Friday. Megacorporations like Latour-Fisher sat at the top of the food chain. Higher than cops, higher than city councils, higher than entire governments. They held immeasurable wealth and exercised all-but-unchecked power. And if you worked for the company, you were someone special, someone who was catered to. A one-percenter. Your association with an outfit like Latour-Fisher got you a better table at a restaurant, better service from a bank, preferential pricing almost everywhere. It got you laid, quite often.

  Stamping out his cigarette, he spotted a seat opening up at a ramen stand. He shouldered his way through the crowd and slid onto the plastic stool. The stand’s proprietor, a tiny man with a paper hat, nodded at him from behind a curtain of steam. Reaching for a pair of chopsticks, Maddox ordered a soyu bowl and a Kirin.

  So he was going to datajack for the man now. What would Rooney say if he could see him? Would he laugh and call him a soulless sellout? Or would he just stroke his beard and say nice move, boyo? Ride that gravy train for as long as you can.

  5 - Tailing the Salaryman

  Beatrice saw nothing special about this Maddox person on first impression. But then most corporati, vain and shallow and absurdly status-conscious, didn’t impress her. Still, he’d been summoned by one of the company’s top suits, so she wouldn’t put much stock in first impressions.

  She followed him from a discreet two-block distance. On the jammed streets of his neighborhood, she might as well have been ten kilometers away. Even if he whirled around and looked in her exact direction, he’d never spot her in the churning pedestrian sea. From her perspective, though, he was easy to pick out, despite the crowd and the constant distractions of giant holo ads and street barkers. For floating above the salaryman’s head, a downward-pointing cone followed him, a shape visible only to her. The company had given her the geo PIN for his specs, allowing her to tag him, and now he was as easy to follow as a child toting a giant red balloon.

  For an undomed area, the neighborhood’s street level wasn’t half-bad. Passable food, fewer beggars and less general squalor than much of the rest of the City. The crowd was young, mostly tadpole corporati, twentysomething execs-in-training who earned decent salaries and walked with fast, purposeful strides. Always in a hurry, always talking fast. Assholes,
for the most part.

  She tailed the salaryman, her corporati disguise branded perfection, down to the Granville specs with untreated glass lenses. She didn’t need a working set of specs, since her own eyes, a pair of artificial implants hardwired to her optic nerves, were far more advanced than even high-end military-grade specs. She’d purchased them from an off-grid Chinatown clinic that specialized in such things. They hadn’t been cheap, but she’d found them to be worth every dollar she’d paid. Over the years she’d invested a small fortune in her eyes and a dozen other upgrades and genehacks, not a single one of them legal.

  In her line of work, the unmodded were the unemployed.

  She followed the salaryman as instructed, even though she found it a bit overkill, not to mention hopelessly antiquated. The executive could have tracked the salaryman on his own, or even had the cops keep an eye on him via street cam feeds. Hell, he could have had one of the company’s bumblebee drones follow Maddox, hovering over his head, totally unseen, recording every step the guy took. But no, he’d insisted on an off-the-radar tail. No drones, no cops, no official corporate resources. And if it looked like the salaryman was trying to skip town, heading for the train station or the airport, she was to call Hahn-Parker immediately. The EVP was the paying party, so she didn’t question it. If he wanted her to tail the salaryman until morning the old-fashioned way, fine by her.

  Still, it triggered a rumble of uncertainty in her, a sense of something not quite right about this gig. Something besides the fucked-up way she’d been recruited.

  “Hey, baby, where’d you get those specs?”

  A man to her left, matching her stride for stride, smiled at her stiffly. Before she could react, he leaned forcefully against her with his shoulder. Shoved off-balance, she stutter-stepped sideways, and then suddenly there was a second man, his hand locked around her upper arm, pulling her. In less than a second, she’d been jostled off the avenue and into a darkened narrow alleyway.