The Solid-State Shuffle (Sunken City Capers Book 1)

by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  We're low enough now to the top of the building that I can see the individual lawn chairs around the wide rooftop patio with grass. I can see the lights in the pool slowly swirling on the bottom under the water.

  The vehicle touches down on the landing pad with a thunk at the north end of the penthouse complex.

  The goon next to me stays put while another goon, stocky and thick in a shiny blue suit, walks up to the car and opens the door. "Follow me," he says in a deep voice.

  Seriously, that shiny blue suit is an affront to the eyes. It's nighttime, and it's shining at me from all the artificial light. I feel like I should be in a nightclub or something with booming music and roving multicolored lights.

  The soft-looking goon slides over the back seat to follow behind me.

  The air feels cooler up here then it did on the street. I can smell the fine dirt from the small stone gravel surrounding the landing pad, the exhaust from the air vehicle powering down.

  We move over the thin gravel toward the black metal mesh staircase leading down, the stones crunching underfoot. The metal is still warm from the sun setting over an hour and a half ago; I can feel the individual crisscross patterns on each metal stair through the soles of my tennis shoes.

  I breathe in through my nose, deep into my chest, and exhale slowly. The smells of cut grass and moist earth dominate the rooftop patio as I descend.

  The stocky goon leads me across a small courtyard with gray square pavers to the library, whose entire two-story wall has been retracted. It's a beautiful, brightly-lit, long, two-story space filled with books and comfortable reading spaces.

  No one's in it.

  My escorts funnel me into the library and direct me toward an archway in the two-story wall of books. The air gets cooler, less humid as we step deeper into the library. My rubber soles squeak on the shiny wood floors.

  The archway is rich with inlaid wooden design work—geometric patterns alternating with light and dark wood. There's something else to it that I don't have time to process as the goons hurry me under it. The passageway is lined with more books.

  The stocky goon stops in the passageway and releases a catch to reveal a hidden staircase leading downward behind the bookcase to my left.

  My stomach squirms. Nothing good can be down there.

  I'm herded down. The staircase, the walls, are all utilitarian. Plain. Unadorned. Not meant to be shown—and easily hosed down and cleaned if necessary.

  At the bottom of the stairs is a metal door. I recognize its kind immediately. It's a dead room.

  The door swings inward, and there's Christina with a smirk and malevolence in her eyes. She's in a light gray women's suit, and still wearing evening gloves, gray this time.

  I walk forward, my heart thumping wildly in my chest, terrified of what I might find. My legs are working, but I'm not sure how; they feel like they belong to someone else.

  The room is like the staircase, plain white walls without decoration. Simple, easily replaceable, tan folding chairs are pushed up against the walls of the sinister square room. No carpet. Only a concrete floor with several questionable stains.

  Puo sits in a tan folding chair at the far corner from the door, dried blood on his chest and under his chin, a red and purple bruise blossoming on his cheek. Winn is several chairs down, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. His beautiful black curly hair looks matted and wet on the back of his head. There's a red line around his neck where it looks like someone choked him with his necklace. Bastards.

  Across from each of them sits a goon with a gun. I hate guns. They should never look so casual.

  Puo and Winn look up as I walk in. Winn looks like he's considering doing something stupid, while Puo is trying to catch my eye.

  Colvin arrests my attention with, "How did you get this?" He's holding up the solid-state drive between his fore- and middle finger like a cigarette. His dark brown eyes are narrow, intense, a wild feral quality to them.

  Colvin stands across from the door in the opposite corner from Puo and Winn, leaning forward slightly. His dark brown hair is slicked back. He's wearing a white sweater that shows off his wide shoulders and exudes power. But his dark slacks and brown dress shoes make me think he was on a date or something when he got called in.

  "How did—?" I start to ask.

  Colvin nods at the goon across from Puo.

  In one smooth motion, the goon in a blue suit with a purple shirt raises his gun and fires.

  "NO!" I scream.

  A puff of concrete a few inches to the left side of Puo's head bursts forward. The sonic whiplash of the gunshot smacks against my ears.

  Puo jerks, but otherwise doesn't move. Keeps his hands on his legs as his face breaks into sweat. His thick chest rises and falls, matching the pace of my own.

  Winn startles. Sweat pours out on his forehead. His muscles tense, ready for action.

  That son of a bitch.

  The gunshot reverberates in the small space. No one says anything as the ringing in our ears fades away.

  Puo's hand is twitching. Hand signals. Puo is signaling me.

  Puo keeps his wide eyes on the gun with a slow swirl of smoke across from him. Switched, is all Puo is able to signal with crossed fingers.

  Oh, shit. Switched how? Switched that the treacherous trio managed to get the real drive? Or switched as in Puo managed to switch whatever drive they had with the fake he had on him?

  Is the drive Colvin is holding is one of our fakes, or the real one?

  Colvin says, his voice tight, "Every time you dither, make a smartass comment, or ask a question, Anton is going to fire one inch closer to his head. And he's not a great shot. How. Did. You. Get. This?"

  I gulp. I can't take my eyes off of Puo and that bullet hole a few inches away from his head. I nod to give myself time. To think through what Puo just signaled me. There's only one way to play it where we might live.

  "I'll talk," I say. I look back to Colvin. "Just listen until the end." I don't wait for a response. "It's a fake. A decoy. A means to lure the real thieves into exposing themselves." Please God, let that be true.

  "A fake?" Colvin asks, and glances at the drive.

  "She's lying," Christina says. She comes to stand next to Colvin.

  I breathe shallowly; my mouth has gone dry.

  Colvin continues to ask dangerously, "And how would you know what the drive looked like to fake it? Or the correct homing protocol?"

  "Verify that it's a fake," I say, "then I'll explain."

  Colvin starts to nod to the blue-suited, purple-shirted goon.

  "Wait!" I say. "Fine!" When no immediate shot comes, I rush, "We know who took it. As for the protocol, we visited Pacific View Bank."

  "You visited the bank?" Colvin asks, getting more upset.

  "Yes!" I snap back. "You asked us to investigate, but didn't give us squat to go on. I pulled the latitude/longitude from Valle's boat the day we went to the marina, before it disappeared." It all sounds pretty damn plausible, and should cover any evidence they may have found of our scuba suits.

  Colvin processes that information. "Who. Took. It?" Colvin bites the question off.

  I carefully keep my eyes off of Christina. "Listen to me—" I hold up both my hands to try and keep him calm. "—It's not as simple as snatching it back."

  Colvin starts to nod at the goon.

  I step between them, breaking Colvin's line of sight. "Verify the drive is a decoy," I say. "Verify that part of it at least, and then we'll talk about the rest."

  "You are in no position," Colvin says, "to dictate anything."

  "I'm not dictating. I'm asking," I say.

  Colvin just stares at me.

  "For God's sake," I say, my nerves frayed. "You came to us. At least check the drive before killing anyone," I nearly start to plead.

  That, at least, seems to have gotten through to him. "Fin, go get my silver tablet. It's on my desk. And get the stand." Colvin never takes his eyes off of me.

>   The stocky goon, Fin, opens the metal door soundlessly, its hinges well-oiled, and disappears.

  "They are the thieves, Mr. Colvin," Christina says. "We found the drive at their house—"

  Colvin cuts her off, "I am aware. Let's see what's on it." To me he asks, "What's going on?"

  I say, "The decoy wasn't supposed to start phoning home until Sunday. Puo?" I ask turning toward him.

  "The decoy accidentally thought it was Sunday," Puo says. "I was messing with the municipal system, resetting some traffic lights for this coming weekend, when the date change accidentally back-propagated. So it phoned home before it should've."

  Winn carefully keeps his face neutral through the explanation. He always was a quick study. But his pupils are too large for the amount of light, which is worrying me.

  "Sunday?" Colvin asks.

  "When the trap was supposed to be sprung," I say.

  "Then what were you doing with Hayes tonight?" Colvin asks.

  I answer with as little attitude as I can manage, "You haven't paid me anything yet. I still need to eat." And pay the damn Citizen Maker. But one problem at a time right now.

  "So your business with him tonight," Colvin clarifies, "is unrelated?"

  "Yes," I say, all too aware of Christina standing next to Colvin with her eyes zeroed in on me like a hawk. To Colvin I say, "We were going to warn you an hour beforehand about the decoy. We can still pull it off."

  Fin returns with the DNA-bonded military tablet that we gave as our tribute and hands it to Colvin along with a stand for it.

  I resist the impulse to comment on Colvin's tablet, anything to remind him that we were once in his good graces. The drive has to be a fake, it just has to.

  Sweat slides down the back of my neck.

  Colvin sits himself down right on the floor and sets the tablet in the stand facing away from me. A blue, virtual keyboard is projected onto the concrete floor, and he plugs in the drive.

  My chest doesn't want to seem to work. Puo says the drives were switched. But what drives? When? How?

  All three of us have a goon with a gun watching us. If that's the real drive, there's no way we're walking out of here. I can feel the blood pound in my neck. My mind is blank on trying to come up with a story.

  The electronic lights hum in the concrete death chamber. There's no disc revving up in a solid-state drive. No visible clues other than the little blue light on the bottom that it's powered on. One of the goons, immune from the descending pall, shuffles his shoes against the concrete behind me.

  Colvin's face is impassive, unaltered in the general murderous rage that's evident in the tightness of his eyes, the pursedness of his lips. He stares at the screen, swiping, typing. Searching for our fates.

  Sweat drips under my arms, splashes hotly against my side. The smell of burnt gunpowder threatens on the air, invites more. The dust from the bullet hole near Puo's head lingers on the tongue.

  My father used to do this, drag it out. He explained to me once that it wasn't about a cat playing with a mouse. It was about a lion before his pride, about the stories they would tell afterward.

  My father, I desperately start to think. Is there anything he can do? Anyway I can weave him into this?

  Still Colvin says nothing. He just stares at the screen. No longer typing. No longer swiping. He's made his decision.

  The air grows heavier. I can feel its hotness on the back of my neck, creeping up my upper arms.

  I glance back at Puo. Sweat drips off of Puo's temple. He's breathing rapidly, dark sweat stains growing on his baggy black T-shirt.

  Winn looks no better, sweat framing his face. He looks like he's going to be sick.

  Colvin unclips the solid-state drive with a snap, jerking my attention back to him. He slowly, deliberately wraps up the drive, turns off the virtual keyboard, picks up the tablet and drive, and stands up.

  Every second feels like another stone on our backs. Every breath like it's on borrowed time.

  "Fin," Colvin prods. Colvin hands the tablet back to the goon, who then disappears.

  "Why Sunday?" Colvin finally asks.

  Christina glances between Colvin and me, trying to figure out if the drive was a fake or not.

  "It's what it took to line things up properly," I lie breathlessly.

  "And you can still execute this plan?" Colvin asks.

  "You can't be serious—" Christina starts, but Colvin cuts her off just by looking at her.

  "Yes," I say, anything to get the hell out of here.

  "Mr. Colvin," Christina starts again. "That's the drive. We followed its signal, took it from their home. I know that drive."

  "But not what's on it," Colvin counters. "It's a fake—"

  Oh, thank God. I could kiss Puo. I try to keep the overwhelming relief from my face, and restrain from taking big heaping gulps of precious air. My relief is short lived when I see another hand sign from Puo, stolen goods.

  It means he's carrying stolen merchandise on him—the real drive. Switched, Puo had signaled. Christina was adamant that was the real drive. Puo must have switched it with the fake? But—?

  "—A very good fake," Colvin adds to mollify Christina. "One that still raises a lot of questions." To me he says, "You can run your game, but—"

  My stomach sinks at the way he says but.

  "One of these two—" Colvin motions between Winn and Puo. "—stays behind as collateral. If the real drive isn't in my hand by Sunday at midnight. Whoever's here will be executed. Understood?"

  When I don't answer he says, "If you're not going to explain now, then explanations later aren't going to save you. So either explain or choose who stays behind."

  My mouth has suddenly gone dry.

  Both Puo and Winn look at me. Puo's round face is covered in sweat. He hates being in the field in the best of times. I can't imagine how he must be feeling with a bullet hole inches from his head. Winn looks at me with a softness to his eyes, a resigned acceptance; the only man that's ever actually loved me for me. And now I need to choose who will get left behind, potentially executed.

  I— I can't. Puo's been with me since forever. And I— I think I'm in love with Winn.

  "The fat one," Christina suggests.

  "No!" I ejaculate. "No, I need Puo for the job." God help me, it's true. He's the best chance of us surviving through this. And he should know where the real drives are.

  Winn gives a slight nod as if he was expecting it and hangs his head. He can't even look at me.

  "You have little more than forty-eight hours," Colvin says. He instructs Fin to escort Puo and me out.

  Puo gets up with an effort, his legs shake as he walks over to me. I watch Winn the whole time we walk out—he's hanging his head low.

  I want to go to him, tell him that it'll be okay. I want to tell him that it's true, that I love him.

  But I can't find the words.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  "WHERE WE HEADED?" Puo asks.

  We both sit in the Pelican, Colvin's lit-up penthouse that holds Winn captive dropping away below us in the night.

  "Korum's," I answer. "I need a drink." And that's the truth. I'm covered in multiple layers of sweat. My T-shirt is damp against my back. More than anything I want a shower. But there's not a moment to spare.

  All that Sunday talk was bullshit. I needed to give us more time with Colvin. And I wanted the treacherous trio to think they had a little bit of breathing room. We need to strike now, while the chaos of what just happened keeps the situation fluid. We need to salvage what we can of the original plan, and to do that, we need to pretend to get drunk.

  Puo looks over at me, but then nods. "You got it, boss." It's a mark of seriousness when Puo doesn't add some kind of smartass comment.

  I'm dying to ask what the hell happened back there with the drives, but the Pelican has been out of our possession and held by an irate Boss for at least an hour—who knows what has been added, modified, or secreted on her. If we survive, I may j
ust buy a new one to be sure.

  I tell Puo, "I've got a hankering for an Easy Street Manhattan with a twist. Think we have time?" I ask.

  Puo glances behind him at his equipment. "Yeah, I think so."

  'Easy Street' is eavesdropping in Puo and mine's vernacular; 'with a twist' is a reversal, in this case letting yourself be eavesdropped. I was asking Puo if he could detect which modified citizens chips were hacked so we could plant some information.

  We may technically have forty-eight hours to save Winn's life, but really it's just tonight. And as scared as I am of getting Winn killed, a part of me squirms at what will happen between us if we save him as well—I have no idea what the fallout will be for me choosing Puo over him.

  The image of him hanging his head, avoiding looking at me haunts me as we drive toward Korum's.

  * * *

  For once, the stupid high-school hierarchy of Korum's works in our favor. Since Puo and I are relatively new quantities, even though we're established professionals, we're stuck in the middle of the open floor tables.

  This means there's plenty of people nearby, and privacy isn't a priority—I still haven't gotten Puo alone enough yet to actually hear the truth of what happened back at Colvin's. But for right now, the potential eavesdroppers and lack of privacy is by design.

  We're surrounded on all sides and, according to Puo's discrete hand signals, at least two people near us have the hacked modified citizen ships.

  Even better is Long Chin with his creepy blond mustache lingering in the back of Korum's keeping an eye on us. There's no point in him trying to hide himself—he came right over when we arrived to arrange to meet the fence per our agreement (Sunday at three in the afternoon), no doubt trying to sniff out what happened at Colvin's. I'm sure Hayes is already well aware of what happened and that the time to meet the fence was a stab at shaking something more loose from us and learn something of our plans for Sunday.

  I told Long Chin that'd be great and got rid of him. I have no intention of going to that meeting. We have more important things to do. Like pretend to get drunk.

  "Another round ... around?" I slur. "No round. Definitely round." I raise my hand and swirl it and point it down at the table.