by James Wake
“Classified Auktoris Holding” appeared in her HUD.
Interesting. She glanced at the storefront, which was still buzzing with activity. Her HUD pinged a fairly regular drone route right above her head—very discouraging if one wanted to, say, break in the front door. But the store was on the corner of the building, very near a narrow alleyway that spoked off from the main street.
“Jackson, what are you doing?” Ortega called after her as she wandered near the alley.
“Sniffing around.”
“Our shift is over.”
She spotted a side door on the building, open and blocked by a lone Auktoris tech on a stepladder.
“Howdy there,” Jackson said, walking up and steadying the ladder with both hands.
“Oh, thank you, Officer,” the tech said, his voice quiet and muffled through the respirator on his mask. He was prying a camera out of a mount above the door; the external casing lay in pieces on the top step of his ladder.
“The lens is fried?” Jackson said.
“Mm-hmm,” the tech said. “Fairly routine if it weren’t for, you know, the break-in.”
She gave the door a quick visual check—no damage. Her fingers touched the scanner on the wall. It blinked red.
“Did you need to get through?” the tech asked.
“No rush,” Jackson said, ignoring Ortega as he shuffled up behind her, nervously glancing behind them.
The tech climbed down and scooted his ladder to the side. Jackson slid through, smiling as Ortega shoved a coffee into the tech’s hand and blustered something about thanks and good job and goodbye. It wasn’t like the mask had a drinking hole in it.
Jackson’s goggles adjusted quickly, compensating for the dim fluorescents after the bright dawn light. The back hallways were empty and quiet. Judging from all the noise around the corner, the techs were still working their way back here, scanning and sweeping and saving pictures of every inch of the store.
“Whatever you’re doing, do it fast,” Ortega said through gritted teeth.
Jackson wasn’t even sure what she was doing, but she was a firm believer in following her gut. She held still, waiting for the loading dots at the top of her HUD to catch up.
Something pinged in the office in front of her. Unrecognized signature, wireless transmission. The door was half open, showing a depressing little closet of an office, bare and seemingly forgotten.
Her goggles highlighted the source, a small plastic nub sticking out of one of the network ports on the wall. She crouched and zoomed in on it as she pulled a multitool from her vest.
It was a featureless little device, without even a link light. Definitely homemade. It reminded her of the hacked-together transmitters she’d seen so often at her last job, on everything from makeshift network repeaters to IEDs. She snapped her tool open into pliers—she didn’t think fooling with this one would set off a bomb—pried it out, and held it in front of her goggles.
“Uh, yes, ma’am,” Ortega said from the hallway. “Yes, I understand. We were just leaving. Only having a look around. No reason to be like that.”
Fucking Auktoris suits. Jackson slipped the transmitter into a small plastic evidence bag and hid it in her vest. She stood up just before the suited woman burst through the door.
“Yup, I understand, private property,” Jackson said, politely and professionally, even as the woman launched into stern warnings regarding legal ramifications. As Jackson made to leave, she was surprised when the woman, much smaller than her, was blocking the doorway. Refusing to budge an inch.
“Excuse me?” Jackson said.
“Name. Badge number. Superior officer. Now,” the woman said, then added “Please” in a sharp tone that betrayed the word.
“I’m sure you already know,” Jackson said.
“In your words, on camera,” the woman said, tapping her temple. “Now.”
Ah. So that was how it was going to be. Jackson let out a heavy sigh.
* * *
Hours and hours later, Jackson made it home.
The cab dropped her off in front of her building, throwing a bill up on the display. It even asked for a tip, which she thought was ridiculous considering no one but a computer was driving.
The bill disappeared before she could pay, replaced by a short ad for recliners. Jackson cursed—she’d been looking out the window the whole time, ignoring the ads. Now she had to sit through this garbage. No wonder so many people ducked the fares and ate the extra fees.
As soon as it finished, she swiped her fingertips past the screen and ignored the cheery, “Thank you for choosing Auktoris Ride Services” announcement as she got out. There was no choose about it when it was the only game in town.
It was way too clean here, right on the edge of downtown. She walked inside her building, bracing herself for rats and roaches and needles and God knew what else crunching under her boots but felt only dull carpet instead. Old habits died hard.
The elevator went straight to her floor, then made her wait before the doors would open, playing the exact same ad for recliners on the touch display. Jackson nodded along, muttering curses. She ran her hands through her hair, short and straight and bleached platinum, squished flat from wearing her helmet all night. The insides of her eyelids felt like sandpaper. Same old, same old.
What wasn’t the same was the person in the hallway. Her right hand found its way to the pistol on her hip, the same off-standard revolver she carried while on duty. A man was waiting at the door across from hers, with something in his hand.
A bottle. A guest. Suspicious, at this time of day. Unable to help herself, Jackson approached him cautiously. A smarter perp would’ve waited at a door farther down, not so obviously by her door.
The door opened, and the man was welcomed inside. Jackson knew none of her neighbors, couldn’t recall ever seeing any of them. It didn’t matter. Her hand relaxed but stayed on the handle of her gun until she was inside her apartment, the door locked behind her.
“Dim lights. Draw shades,” she said, as she did every time she came home. There were settings that would do this automatically, but she never bothered with them. Her apartment was spare, with little more than a closet, a dresser, and her own recliner. It was always ads for those damn things. How often did a person have to buy one?
Jackson drew her gun and unloaded it, then carefully polished the black metal and checked the dark-stained wood of the grip for any scratches. Satisfied, she placed it in a case on her dresser, then ran her fingers over the elegant flowers etched into the metal on the case’s face. “M.F.J.” stared back at her. Her mother’s initials.
Her eyes hurt. She should’ve been asleep hours ago. She’d either wake up late and miss out on gym time before her next shift or, more likely, only sleep an hour or two. Either way, she kicked off her boots and collapsed into the one thing she’d seen in every living space for years, from high-end luxury lofts to the endless slums outside the city’s wall.
Her chair had come with the apartment. Without thought, she reclined it into a bed and threw the familiar weight of her headset on her face. Those old habits again, no matter how tired she was.
The first thing that popped up was a new message from Ortega. His profile pic was some Spanish she didn’t understand overlaid on a bejeweled cross: “Libres o muertos. Jamás esclavos!”
She rolled her eyes every time she saw it.
Thanks for ditching me with the captain at the station, his message read.
Thanks for taking the heat, Papi, she typed back, her fingers poking the air in front of her.
What did you take from the store?
She shook her head. Stupid of him to even ask her on here.
Nothing, she typed back.
You can tell me. Least you can do after I took an ass reaming from the cap.
Ignoring the message, she reached down and pulled the evidence bag out of where she’d hidden it in he
r sock. The transmitter was dead by now, thankfully, or she never would’ve made it out of the station’s locker room.
Jackson held it up in front of her headset, letting the camera on the front get a good scan of it for later. She turned the bag slowly to cover all angles before ripping it open and laying skin on the thing for the first time.
Printed, for sure. It had that gummy plastic feel. She tried to crack the case open but was surprised to find no seam; she’d only seen ones like this later in her career. Cartels, usually, or government spooks. Most ragtag outfits didn’t have the newer-model 3-D printers you needed to get a solid casing.
Cracking it open would require a tool. Which would require getting up. On top of that, she might damage it. No, she would need a second opinion, unfortunately.
A yawn forced its way out. Jackson dropped the transmitter in her lap, then clicked her headset to ambient noise: crickets and a warm, humid breeze sweeping through the leaves of the ash tree out back.
She couldn’t even remember what it looked like. It didn’t matter. Sleep came within seconds.
Chapter Four: La Garrud
“Pay dirt!” Tess said. “This stuff is moving.”
Nadia ran her index finger around the rim of her coffee cup. Late-afternoon light bathed the office. Soft and gentle, it stung in her eyes.
“And here’s another deposit,” Tess said, pacing behind her. “I haven’t even put it all up yet.”
“You’re selling it already?”
“Sure, why not?”
Nadia rubbed her temple with two fingers as she squinted at the coffee. She took a tentative sip and jerked back. Still too hot.
“People are already bugging me for more, and I haven’t even finished going through it all,” Tess said, her fingers twitching at her sides as she typed. “Internal memos, password files, site directories…it’s all good stuff.”
“Who’s buying it?”
Tess shrugged, her eyes distant and flickering. “Weirdos on the dark web.”
“Dark web?”
“It’s like the deep web, for people who aren’t cowards.”
Nadia shook her head. She didn’t plan on trying to fence any of the jewelry she’d stolen—had never bothered, honestly. But if she had, she wouldn’t have made as much money as Tess was making for them this very moment.
“I still don’t understand why people are paying money for a bunch of corporate e-mail.”
“Most of them are probably proxies for news sites. They snap up info by the pound, I swear,” Tess said. “Plenty of data brokers out there too. They’ll give it to the government or resell it back to Auktoris. Who cares, though? Their money is real.”
“As long as you’re happy,” Nadia said, shrugging and blowing across the top of her coffee. She took another sip. Much better.
“It’ll taper off later today,” Tess said. “Once it’s out there, it makes the rounds pretty quick. Probably worthless by tonight.”
How much money? Was it worth the effort? The risk? Nadia was about to ask, felt a brief flash of curiosity, but quickly realized it didn’t matter. Even if they hadn’t made a cent, she’d still want to try something like this again. At any rate, from the thrill in Tess’s voice and the bounce in her step, they were making quite a profit.
“How are you doing?” Tess asked.
Never felt more alive, dear.
“Tired,” Nadia said instead, suppressing a grin. She took a gulp of coffee. “Getting better.”
“That got kind of scary at the end, huh?”
Nadia rubbed at the faint bruise on her wrist, saw in her head the smear of bright red on her glove. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
In truth, she was disappointed. Such an embarrassing moment—all her painstaking plans almost crashing down because she couldn’t escape the grip of some uniformed oaf. So undignified.
Not enough to ruin her night out, but still.
“I’ve been working on something for next time,” Tess said. “Come look.”
“Didn’t you sleep?”
“Pfft, no. Are you kidding? I started combing through this stuff the moment you got back. Come here. Look!”
Nadia grudgingly followed her to one of the many mannequins strewn about the workspace. It had thick black bands on each forearm, like bracers.
“All right, so check it out,” Tess said, holding up a simple grabber, a claw on the end of a long pole. The kind of thing you bought only if you were too old or disabled or short to reach a shelf.
“Why do you have that?”
“Irrelevant,” Tess said, sniffling and wiping her nose on her sleeve again. She carefully reached for the mannequin, then leaned away. “Oh, no, I’m a security guard. All right, Nadia, you’re under arrest!”
She closed the grabber around the mannequin’s wrist, exactly as the guard had grabbed Nadia last night. The moment she did, a loud snap rang out. Nestled spikes shot out of the bracer, unfolding like spider’s legs.
“Countermeasures!” Tess said.
Nadia frowned. “Hmm.” The arms of the grabber were bent—tangled in the jointed, savage spikes of the bracer.
“We can integrate them into your sweater without too much trouble, I think,” Tess said. “Maybe at the shoulder and hip as well? That should cover most scenarios. I doubt anyone’s going to grab you by the ankles.”
Nadia wasn’t convinced. “Couldn’t it…I don’t know, push them away? Shock them? Something a bit less bloodthirsty?”
“Ooh, electrical pads!” Tess perked up, her eyes glazing over with light. “Might take me a bit longer to work up that prototype.”
Nadia smiled. She downed the rest of her coffee, ready to bring up the words that had jumped out at her earlier. “Next time?”
“Huh?” Tess said, lost in her private screens, not even looking at her partner.
“You said ‘next time.’ Are you sure you’re comfortable with more of this?”
“Oh.” Tess paused, her eyes returning to normal. “Well, yeah, I mean we’ve been calling this the pilot run, right?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about stealing the jewelry.” She meant every word.
“Yeah…that…” Tess shrugged as though it were nothing. “I guess I’d be madder at you if you were in prison right now.”
“I’m sure the scads of money you’re making aren’t helping either.”
“I’ll get over it,” Tess said, grinning.
“Just let me know if there’s anything I can do to redeem myself,” Nadia said, with a hand on her heart. She gave a dainty little bow. “I am at your disposal.”
“Okay, relax,” Tess said, rolling her eyes. “It’s definitely not even the worst thing you’ve ever done to me.”
Nadia winced. “How heavy are these countermeasures of yours?”
“Depends on how much damage you want them to do,” Tess said, her pupils filled with light again.
The answer she wanted was “none,” if possible. There was nothing exciting to Nadia about hurting someone, causing pain and injury, no matter how justified. In her mind, she saw the smear of blood on her glove again.
Disgusting.
But there were unpleasantries she would have to face. She’d finally seen that last night. In all her plans, she got in, did what she pleased, and got out, undetected and unhassled. That, however, was unrealistic. Like making clothes only in sizes meant for fashion models—no one but the relatively small community of anorexic women would buy them.
Not that anyone ever bought anything she made, but still.
She had been very lucky last night; she would not rely on being lucky again. She and Tess had spent so much time fussing over the tools of her new trade that she’d completely neglected the most important one: no one countermeasure could cover every contingency. But she herself…her body was something she worked hard on, was proud of, for reasons that were entirely w
rong now.
She looked down at herself, wearing yoga pants and a tank top calculated to look casual but still put together, making a statement even in the privacy of her own home. She was in good shape, she supposed, trim and petite and nothing but tasteful feminine curves.
But soft. Weak. She could put on all kinds of wonders created by Tess, and she’d still only be a little girl playing with grown-up toys.
“Tess?” she said.
“Mmm-hmm?”
“Can you search for anything in this area having to do with combat training?”
Tess froze, her fingers stopping their nearly constant twitching. “Excuse me?”
“You know, boxing gyms, martial arts…er…schools, that sort of thing.”
“Like a dojo?”
“Yes,” Nadia said, not knowing at all if that was what she meant.
“Is there a reason you can’t search for it?”
“You’re so much better at it,” Nadia said, playfully bumping into her with her hip. “We should take a look around at some places tonight.”
“Are you planning on kicking the guard’s ass next time?” Tess said, just this side of mocking.
It did sound ridiculous. “I’m not trying that again without some kind of training. It’s different for you, sitting here behind your proxies or whatever.”
“No, I get it,” Tess said, crashing back into her seat. “I was scared half to death just watching.”
Scared. Nadia had been avoiding that word. She had been many things in that moment, but she was sure scared wasn’t quite one of them.
“Oh, hey,” Tess said, throwing a hand at the screens on her desk. “You’ll like this.”
The displays shared a feed from one of the big news-streaming sites, showing the jewelry store. Nadia stared, drinking it in. “Breaking News,” it said. “Stunning Robbery,” it said. “Brazen. Bold. Audacious.”
A crowd was gathered out front, held back by security barriers. A crowd.
Nadia’s eyes were huge, lit up with glee. She managed to control her mouth, holding back the huge grin fighting to be free.
It didn’t last long. A picture of a hefty older gentleman in a security uniform appeared on the screen. Minor injury. Expected to recover.