by D L Young
Flustered, the woman hurried to the elevator, chiding the terrier in sharp whispers. Lozano and Beatrice continued down the hallway, then doubled back to 2814 when the elevator doors closed. The hustler waved the key card across a sensor panel on the door. Unseen latches slid and clacked. Lozano opened the door and the pair stepped inside.
Entryway lights glowed to life as Beatrice shut the door behind them. The condo was quiet and dark, its windows almost fully opaqued.
“Check the office first,” Maddox suggested.
“On it,” she agreed.
“I got the bedroom,” Lozano said.
“No sticky fingers, you hear me?” she warned the hustler. “We’re here for one thing only.”
Lozano looked at her crossly. He tapped his chest and grinned. “Chico’s a professional, bright eyes. Always professional.”
The pair separated and began the search. Automated lighting bloomed overhead as they moved through the condo. The walls were bare, the sofas and chairs low-slung and functional. Maddox saw no decorative touches at all. No vases of flowers, no candleholders. Minimalist didn’t seem a narrow enough a word to describe it.
“Back in a second,” Maddox told Beatrice. “Let me know when you find something.”
“Will do.”
Maddox flipped to VS. The condo’s datasphere still glowed a steady blue.
A minute later Beatrice said, “I found something. Come take a look.”
He flipped back to a small dimly lit office. Beatrice’s hands held a small obsidian cube. “Bottom desk drawer,” she said. “Unlocked. Could it be that easy?”
“Let’s find out,” he replied. “Hook me up.”
She removed the remote link from her jacket, a small plastic rectangle with a flexible antenna. Setting the archive on the desktop, she slotted the link into the archive’s jack and carefully extended the antenna. A small indicator light on the antenna’s tip blinked twice, then glowed a steady green.
“So you found our treasure?” Lozano asked, entering the office. Maddox noticed a Gucci timepiece around the hustler’s wrist that hadn’t been there before.
Beatrice also noticed it. “You’re not leaving here with that,” she said.
The hustler gave her a naughty smile. “Come on, look how nice it is on me. You think it looks as nice on this Novak? I don’t think so.”
“Back where you found it,” she snapped.
“But look how nice—”
“Now,” she insisted.
“Fine, fine.” Disappointed, Lozano unstrapped the timepiece and returned it to the bedroom.
“Low-rent hood,” she muttered under her breath. Then to Maddox: “Can you see it?”
He flipped back to VS. Inside the digital version of the condo, a green cube floated between Beatrice and Lozano’s avatars. The archive, now visible to him thanks to the link.
“I can see it,” he said. “Let me check if it’s what we’re looking for. Stand by.”
He increased resolution and his universe swelled, blowing up around him as if some sorcerer’s spell had shrunk him to the size of an ant. The cube was now as big as a subway car, and what looked like a green wisp of smoke began to emerge from it. The splitter executable he’d loaded onto the remote link, working as planned. Slowly the smoke drifted toward him until it reached the wall of the DS. A neat, perfectly round hole opened up. His way inside. He then called up an analytic bot that visualized as a corkscrew-shaped purple worm. He subvocalized a command, and the bot began twisting forward, passing through the hole and heading toward the archive. Moments later it reached the target, disappearing inside the archive. After a moment it reappeared, hovered in space, and flashed a white-green-white sequence.
“We’ve got a match,” Maddox told Beatrice, not without a small amount of relief. Maybe it would be that easy after all.
Hahn-Parker had described it as a relatively small dataset, which meant the dupe wouldn’t take long. The copy sequence kicked off automatically, appearing as a thin blue-white stream of light emitting from the cube. A counter appeared. 15%…35%…77%…In less than a minute it was over. The dataset was fully copied over onto Maddox’s deck.
The next part, destroying the original, would take a bit more time. Maddox called up the dataspike. It visualized as a series of pulsing yellow lights, shooting into the archive like laser blasters from a movie. Maddox had modified the code, amplifying the spike’s destructiveness, but he’d left the visualization defaults alone. The designer must have been a sci-fi film buff. The archive began to pulse slowly and a new counter appeared on its surface, reading 5%. A moment later it read 10%.
“How much longer?” Beatrice asked.
“Couple minutes,” Maddox estimated.
No one spoke as the spike did its work. Maddox watched the counter, aware of his mouth curling into a smile back at the rental. It had been so long since he’d datajacked. So long since he’d done anything illegal. For a year he’d been living the straight and narrow of a salaryman’s life. Christ, he’d even paid his bills on time. He’d almost forgotten the thrill of the datajacker’s rush, the incomparable satisfaction you felt when you outsmarted security measures, snatched something valuable, then sneaked away without being unnoticed. It was better than sex, better than any drug.
He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it until this moment.
“Get behind me!” Beatrice cried.
Maddox flipped. Two men rushed through the doorway toward Beatrice. He watched as she raised her Ruger, its barrel elongated by a sound suppressor, and fired. The first man dropped. The second reached her before she could fire again. He tackled her, and Maddox’s view whirled as they tumbled to the floor, the pistol knocked from her grasp and skittering away. He glimpsed Lozano, watching with wide eyes, his back pressed to a bookshelf. Not helping, Maddox thought furiously. Cowardly bastard.
Beatrice and the stranger struggled, rolling back and forth in a jumble of striking, grasping limbs. They slammed against the desk, knocking the archive to the floor. Maddox flipped.
The counter kept going. 65%…70%…He flipped back. The stranger reached for the archive, elbowing Beatrice away. He grabbed it and held it for a moment before Lozano reached down and snatched it from him. With the stranger momentarily focused on Lozano, Beatrice recovered the Ruger. A pair of muffled snaps as she shot the man twice in the back. Groaning, he rolled halfway over, then gurgled a long breath and stopped moving.
Stunned, Maddox watched as Beatrice rose to her feet, breathing heavily and switching her gaze between the two bodies. She then looked over at Lozano, who put the archive gingerly on the desk as if it were some invaluable fragile artifact. “Update,” she panted to Maddox.
He flipped. 95%…100%…DATA DESTRUCTION CONFIRMED.
“We’re done,” Maddox said. “Unplug the remote and get out of there.”
What a mess, he thought. Goddamn onsite jobs.
“What are you doing?” he heard Lozano whisper. He flipped back to Beatrice.
The mercenary woman knelt over the first man’s body. Behind his ear there was a discoloration, like a birthmark, only lighter than the surrounding skin. Maddox zoomed for a closer look. It wasn’t discolored skin. It was a patch or covering of some kind.
A sick feeling gripped Maddox. No, it can’t be.
Beatrice ran her finger over the skin-colored patch.
“What is that?” Lozano asked.
She peeled away the patch, revealing a stack of three rectangular slots. Brainjacks. Lozano gasped and stepped backwards.
“Shit,” Beatrice muttered, moving to the second man and finding an identical patch covering identical slots.
She stood and let out a long, exasperated breath. “What the hell are you people mixed up in, salaryman?”
12 - The IP That Wasn't
Beatrice knew all along there was something seriously messed up about this gig. She knew it! She should have never signed on. Should have told Hahn-Parker to screw himself. Should have walked
away, should have taken her chances, calling the corporati on his bluff. Sometimes that was all blackmail was: a bluff.
She landed the hover with an angry thud atop the roof at Sunset Park. She was out and storming down the staircase before the engine fans had stopped spinning, Lozano trailing at a cautious distance. He’d said nothing on the way over, wisely staying quiet lest he anger her more or draw the wrath directed at Maddox onto himself.
She stomped down the stairs. Answers. She was going to get some goddamn answers.
Bursting through the door, she found Tommy sitting cross-legged inside a semicircle of holo displays with security cam images of empty corridors and stairwells. He popped onto his feet. “Everything go all right?”
The salaryman stood at the far end of the room, his arms crossed, glaring at her. As if he had something to glare at her about.
“When exactly were you and that highfloor son of a bitch going to tell me there were ’Nettes wrapped up in this?” she spat.
“’Nettes?” Tommy cried. “What ’Nettes?”
“Very fucked up, holding out on me like that,” she accused.
“I didn’t know anything about that,” the salaryman shot back at her.
“Wait,” Tommy interjected, “there were ’Nettes there?”
“Two of them,” Lozano interjected, holding up a pair of fingers.
“’Nettes are real? Seriously? And you saw some?” The kid’s hands went to his mouth like a child frightened by a ghost story.
“The hell you didn’t know about it,” Beatrice snapped at the salaryman.
“I’m telling you,” he insisted, “I didn’t.”
“You’re the company man on this gig,” she said. “Don’t tell me you and your corporati sugar daddy didn’t know—”
“Hey,” the salaryman interrupted, pointing at her, “you’re security on this job, not me. So if anyone should have known…” His words trailed off, and he slowly lowered his hand. Some of the anger drained from his face. “Wait,” he said, his voice lower now. “You had no idea? Hahn-Parker didn’t say anything at all about…that kind of security risk?”
“Not a single goddamn word.” She stared at him, looking for traces of deception. If he was lying or playing dumb, there was nothing in his face, nothing in his tone that betrayed it. Was it possible the salaryman was as much in the dark as she was?
Beatrice and Maddox stared at each other, their expressions more confused now than angry.
Lozano broke the silence. “Time for Chico to go,” he said, straightening his jacket lapels. “I got you in the condo. My job’s done. You tell that corporati thank you very much.” He headed for the door.
“Nobody’s leaving here until I figure out what’s what,” Beatrice said.
“Sorry, Bright Eyes,” the hustler replied, shaking his head. “Chico didn’t sign up for this.”
“You think I did?” she said. “You stay put.”
The hustler ignored her and reached for the door. She pulled out the Ruger and held it menacingly at her side. The hustler froze, noticing the weapon. His face then broke out into a grin as he backed away from the door. “Since you ask so nicely, Chico will stay around for a while.”
She returned the pistol to her jacket and turned to the salaryman. “We need to talk.”
“Yeah,” he replied, “I think we do.”
***
Nakedfaced, Maddox and Beatrice sat across from each other, the pair separated by a small dining table and a meter of palpable tension. Tommy had been banished to a back room along with a sullen Lozano, offended and grumbling over the snub. Beyond them lay the semicircle of holo monitors, cycling through empty hallways and stairwells, images from the sticky cams Beatrice had placed throughout the building. Morning sunlight slanted through the windows. From outside the whines of hover engines rose and fell, the City’s perpetual background noise.
“Hahn-Parker didn’t tell me anything about ’Nettes,” the salaryman said. “It was supposed to be a simple copy-and-bash job, that’s it.”
“So you say,” she replied.
Maddox shrugged. “I might work at the same company as Hahn-Parker, but I only met the man yesterday. I don’t know him any better than you do. And all I can tell you is that if he knew something about ’Nettes, he didn’t let me in on it, same as you’re saying he held out on you.”
Beatrice sighed in frustration. She still didn’t get the sense he was lying or trying to mislead her, but she was a long way from trusting his every word. She suspected he felt the same way about her.
“Hahn-Parker wasn’t straight with us,” he said.
“That’s hardly a news flash.”
“Not just about those ’Nettes, I mean. About what I jacked too.”
Just what she needed. More bad news. “What do you mean?”
The salaryman removed a small bag of tobacco from his shirt pocket. “While you were coming back in the hover, I took a look at the dataset. It was encrypted.”
“Yeah, so?” Nothing unusual about that.
“It wasn’t using any of the company’s standard encryption types. It was…different.”
“And…? Didn’t this R&D manager use his own archive? Maybe he used his own encryption too.”
The salaryman lit his cigarette. “No,” he said, blowing smoke, “when I say different, I mean different like a jet fighter is different from a paper airplane. This was something I’ve never seen before. Very advanced, and I know about these things.”
She frowned, waving away the stinking bluish cloud. “So what are you saying?”
“I don’t think the dataset was company IP,” he said. “I think it’s something else.”
“Something to do with ’Nettes.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me, given what just happened.” The salaryman blew smoke, this time directing it away from her. “What about Lozano?” he said. “What’s his take?”
“Nothing coherent,” she sighed. “You saw him. Scared stiff, looking to cut and run.”
“Could be an act.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“Neither would I,” the salaryman agreed. The cigarette’s tip glowed orange as he took a long, contemplative draw. “So where does that leave us?”
“I don’t know.” She didn’t want to say it out loud, and neither did the salaryman. But they both knew it. They’d been caught up in something far bigger, far nastier than they’d bargained for.
“We have to call Hahn-Parker,” the salaryman said. “He’s expecting us to check in. Might look suspicious if we don’t.”
Beatrice blew out a hot breath. What a bloody mess this was. No small part of her wanted to walk out the door and disappear, wash her hands of the whole stinking business. Take every bit of cash she had, buy a new identity, and get the hell out of the City. Maybe Lozano had the right notion. Maybe his cowardice was wisdom in disguise. But then again, when you didn’t know what you were running from, how could you ever be sure when you were safe? No, she couldn’t run and hide. Not yet, anyway. Not until she knew more about the nature of the monster she’d just poked in the eye.
“I’m curious,” she said, “what are you getting out of all this?”
The salaryman blew smoke. “Sorry?”
“What did our honest, straight-shooting benefactor offer you if you took the gig? A promotion? A big bonus? A country club membership? What?”
The salaryman shrugged. “He didn’t offer me anything.” He took a final drag on the cigarette, then dropped it to the cement floor, crushing it under his shoe. “I either played ball or I was out. He didn’t say it straight out like that, but it was pretty clear.”
She nodded. If that was true, then Maddox had been coerced into service just as she had. She wasn’t sure what it meant, or even if it meant anything at all.
“What about you?” the salaryman asked.
“Same kind of deal. No upside, all downside.” She recalled her own chatter bubble conversation with Hahn-Parker, the helplessness
she’d felt at the end of it. She clenched her jaw at the memory. “Saying no wasn’t an option.”
She rose from her chair. “All right, salaryman, let’s go talk to your boss.”
13 - Edward
A ’Nette. The last thing Maddox expected to see on this job was a ’Nette. It was like a ghost from his past had suddenly appeared to mess up his life all over again. And not a friendly ghost like Rooney’s voice in his head. After walking away from all of that, he’d hoped never to cross paths with another ’Nette again, much less two of them.
Maddox sat on the sofa next to Beatrice. On the cushion between them lay his deck, loaded with the stolen dataset. Lozano occupied the chair across from them, nervously turning his specs over in his hands. Neither Maddox nor Beatrice had wanted the hustler to join the call with Hahn-Parker, but Lozano had insisted on not being left out again. They finally agreed—after a tiring bout of the hustler’s wheedling and pleading—but only under the condition he didn’t say a word.
And where the hustler had been a reluctant yes, the kid had been an absolute no. Tommy, grumbling that he could do more than just being a watchdog, reluctantly sat at his station inside the semicircle of monitors, where he’d keep an eye on the sticky cam feeds while the three others made the call.
Maddox put his specs on first and retrieved the secure call code the executive had provided. Beatrice and Lozano donned their own lenses, and then Maddox subvocalized a command, combining their three call feeds together.
The story they’d agreed to a minute earlier wasn’t much of one, Maddox had to admit. On the call they would play dumb and act as if everything had gone to plan. There’d be no talk of ’Nettes or shots fired or strange encryptions. Maddox would tell Hahn-Parker he was leaving immediately, as agreed, to hand-deliver the dataset to the executive. If the call went as planned, they’d buy themselves another hour or two of breathing room to figure out their next move.
If there was a next move.
Maybe it was best, Maddox considered, to finish the job as planned, delivering the goods and keeping their mouths shut, and hope the two messy complications never came back to bite them in the rear. Lozano clearly wanted to cut and run, but Maddox was certain he could talk sense into the man once the hustler calmed down a bit. The mercenary’s mindset was harder to get a handle on. Maybe it was those artificial eyes of hers. While Maddox was sure she was as surprised by the ’Nettes as he was, beyond that he couldn’t read how she was processing the situation. Maybe like Lozano she wanted to drop the whole thing like a hot rock and disappear. Or maybe she’d agree with his own thinking and move forward as planned. Or perhaps she wanted to move along some third, different path. Maddox hoped she was thinking along similar lines as he was, but as the one who’d pulled the trigger, she might not see things the same way. Blood on your hands has a way of changing your perspective on things, even for a seasoned mercenary like Beatrice.