The Line

by K J Southworth

  “Hyde is her lover,” I answer carefully. “You know I would never hurt Lily.”

  Frenzy nods unhappily. It’s obvious by his pained expression that he’s having trouble thinking of Lily with anyone other than himself. “She could have come to me. I would have helped her if she’d asked.”

  Without even mentioning payment, he gets to his feet and heads for his workstation. He takes a metal disk from a stash that he keeps under his seat and sits down. Strapping on the helmet, which covers his eyes and ears, he inserts the disk into a slot on his workstation.

  I don’t know how Frenzy gets his job done. It’s something to do with how the helmet interacts with his brainwaves. What I do know is that he always hums while he works. There are some great bars in B Sector where musicians get together and play all night. It’s his favourite past time to go and listen. With the exception of Lily, he’ll ignore anyone who tries to talk to him.

  Eventually there’s a small whirring sound. The flat, unmarked metal pops out from its slot. Frenzy pulls of his helmet, grabs the disk and tosses it at me.

  “His new name is Sohrab Adam,” he grumbles, “I hope he likes it.”

  “And the approval…?”

  “…on the card.”

  I can’t help but be concerned about Frenzy’s state of mind. Little disappointments can send him into fits of depression, there’s no telling what this news will do to him when he’s had a chance to think about it. “Hyde’s offering fifteen thousand for this.”

  “No charge. It’s for Lily.”

  His despondent expression is making me feel horrible for bringing this job to him. Falling back on teasing, I try to cheer him up. “Would you even know what to do with a woman if you had one?”

  “Still think you’re fucking funny, don’t you?”

  I don’t honour his anger with a response. Instead, I choose to distract him. Pulling out Marietta’s rectangle, I present it to Frenzy for examination. “This is entirely between you and me.”

  Frenzy inspects the objects hard outer surface. Sliding it out of my hands, he opens it and grunts with curiosity.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this before. What are all these markings?”

  “I figured you might be able to find a pattern. Could it be some kind of code?”

  “Maybe,” he mutters as he flips through. I can practically see his neurons firing as he tries to understand the mystery he’s holding in his hands. “The markings aren’t random, that’s for certain… Wait a minute.”

  He sits there thinking, lost in the dizzying passages of his mind.

  “Wait a minute…?” I repeat.

  Ignoring my impatience, Frenzy leans back in his chair. His eyes dart back and forth and then he springs to his feet.

  “Brilliant,” he whispers as he paces around the room. “I never realized that the lines of code could be broken down into individual markings before. I always assumed they were incomplete if they weren’t together.” He’s talking to himself now. If I say something, he won’t hear me. “I thought I was manipulating huge symbols that couldn’t be broken apart, I thought they were what made up the system, but now I see that they can be broken down even further. There are individual characters, small but vital. Imagine! It’s like when Wulff starts painting the room. Each stroke creates the bigger picture, but without the strokes there could be no bigger picture.”

  He’s growing more excited and more agitated by the moment. He bumps hard into the table and doesn’t notice. Turning to me, he throws his arms out dramatically.

  “Frenzy, what the heck…?”

  “Copper, this is huge! If I’m right then this will cut down the time I need to manipulate codes! Instead of cutting out huge sections I’ll only need to substitute the smaller markings.” His eyes continue to dart back and forth. “Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! I see it now, I see it now.”

  I couldn’t understand his babbling if I tried. It looks like he’s ready to explode.

  “Do you know what this means, Copper? Can you believe what this means!”

  “I can say with absolute certainty that I don’t.”

  “I have to practice,” he announces as he disappears into his cubby. “I have to test the theory. I might be getting ahead of myself! I might be jumping to conclusions. But I can’t be! I can’t be! What should I do first? Something simple, that’s right, something simple.”

  He flies out of his cubby and straps his helmet back on. Annoyed, I sit back in my chair and grumble angrily under my breath. I can’t disturb him while he’s working, that could screw with his brain. Instead, I have to watch him giggle happily to himself for the next few minutes.

  I guess his theory is working.

  “You have no idea.” He looks like a crazed maniac when he finally brings himself back out. “This is so amazing. It will take me a few days to reassess everything on the system, but once I have…the possibilities are endless. This might put an end to my crazy days. I might be able to cut the straps off my bed; I might not have to use this bastard anymore!”

  He grabs his straight jacket and bundles it up in his fists. His excitement is infectious. My irritation drains away. Thrilled that he’s found so much in something so small, I lean forward eagerly.

  “So, what is it?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “The…thingy.”

  “Oh!” He cocks his head to the side. “I have no idea.”

  “No idea.”

  “None whatsoever; I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Do you know what it means?”

  “Nope. Where’d you get it? That might give me an idea.”

  “One of Marietta’s performances,” I answer. Then I notice he isn’t carrying it anymore. “Where is it?”

  “Oh, you want it back!” He nervously peers over his shoulder and into his room. “Can I keep it for a few days?”

  “You put it in your cubby, didn’t you?” I cry. “You thought it was yours! That is so typical.”

  “You didn’t know what to do with it,” he mutters sheepishly.

  “I’m still the one who had to steal it from Marietta.”

  “You stole it.” His eyes widen in surprise and fear. “From one of the Whisperers? Are you kidding?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t act like it’s no big deal!” For a moment, I think he’s going to leap at me and grab me by the shirt. He stays in his seat, but he leans forward so that I will understand how upset he really is. “Whisperers have powerful friends. If Marietta finds out you stole her…whatever the heck it is—she might be angry enough to do something about it.”

  “She didn’t even know I was there.”

  “Well, well, well,” says Frenzy, eyes shining impishly. “Still crazy, I see. No wonder Madman wants you.”

  “He’s not going to get me!” Staring intently into Frenzy’s warm gaze, I fold my arms over my chest. “I’m going to need your help to get into Cop Sector.”

  “Nobody gets into A.” He sighs and fixes me with a curious look. “What do you think you need?”

  “It won’t be easy.”

  “That’s obvious. What do you need?”

  Taking a deep breath, I think over what he should know and what he shouldn’t. He needs enough information to get the job done properly, but I can’t give him anything that will tip him off about the line. In other words, he can’t know anything about the SPEF.

  “Do you know why Cop Sector security is so hard to infiltrate?” I finally ask.

  “Simple,” Frenzy answers, “biorhythms.”

  “Exactly. A good manipulator can convince a security system that my thumbprint or my retina scan belongs to someone with clearance. They can’t do that with biorhythms. They’re too complex to mess with and too complex to fake.”

  “I remember,” he says. “I got cocky and nearly didn’t come back from it. I thought I could manipulate a part of the code and convince the system that the biorhythm belonged to someone else. But I missed
something…well, a lot of somethings. There were too many things to change at once. I lost my grip.” A chill runs up his spine and he shakes it off. He looks at me suspiciously. “What does this have to do with how I can help you?”

  “You learned first hand not to mess with Cop security, no matter how good you think you are. But with your help I could get back into A.” My words hang between us for a few moments. “Your brain’s been inside Cop security before.”

  “Only for a few minutes,” he objects.

  “That’s all you’ll need.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  Mentally going over everything I have to gain from pushing Frenzy, I let him sit in suspense. I can tell he doesn’t want to know what my plan is: he’s avoiding my gaze and squirming uncomfortably in his seat. But I’m starting to feel giddy. My plan is exciting, even if it is doomed to failure. It provides me with that coveted third option, something outside Madman and Locket.

  “Cops are allowed access to Cop Sector because their biorhythms are on the system,” I finally reveal. “They’re scanned when they’re born. Every time they go into A, the security system checks to make sure there’s a match.”

  “You told us all as much when Jackson first hired you. A biorhythm is more accurate than a thumbprint but Cops are the only ones with the technology. No one outside of A knows how to replicate it.”

  “You won’t need to replicate it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was a Cop for eleven years, Frenzy. My biorhythm is already on the system. All I need you to do is convince it that I’m still alive.”

  “I can’t do it,” he protests. Nervously running his hand over his sweaty temples, he shakes his head. “There’s no guarantee I’d be able to find what you need. And even if I did, I wouldn’t know how to do it.”

  “Don’t give me that,” I shoot back. He’s starting to piss me off. “You know exactly where the Cops keep the biorhythms; you found them in half a second last time you took a peek. With the right information, you could find mine.”

  “They probably erased it when you disappeared!”

  I’m doing my best to keep my voice calm. Frenzy knows more about the system than I do. He will win this argument if he senses any doubt on my end. “You told me once that nothing can really be erased from the system; it can only be put somewhere else.”

  Frenzy looks like he’s ready to scratch out his own eyes.

  “All you have to do is look,” I persist.

  “I swore I’d never go back in there,” he cries through shallow breaths. He balls his shaking hands into fists. After a few moments of silent, inward struggle, he’s breathing normally again. “I can’t self-destruct again, Copper. When I came back out I wanted to die, just like I did before I met Jackson.”

  I shrink away from his argument. Death wishes aren’t uncommon in the Criminal world. Before Frenzy took Jack’s offer he was throwing himself into suicidal jobs. He never found anything that could destroy him, that’s the irony of how good he really is.

  Frenzy won’t look at me. He knows I’m dead if he doesn’t help.

  “I’ll need to know your second name,” he rasps. “That’s the only way I’ll be able to find what you’re looking for.”

  I’m suddenly hesitant; I’ve never told anyone my second name before. When a new citizen is born the system names them. That name, their first name, is only used for official business. Most everyone goes by their second name—the name their parents gave them. If they don’t it’s because they despise their parents.

  My father told me that he named me Rhys because it reminded him of how he grew up, whatever that means. Apparently, he was so insistent that my mother didn’t know how to object. She wanted to name me after her grandmother. It never occurred to me until now how deeply personal my second name truly is.

  “I’m not going to leave you dry,” Frenzy insists. “Give me the name.”

  I search his determined gaze. “Rhys.”

  “Daryl Rhys,” Frenzy repeats. Going over to his seat he straps on his helmet one more time. “Let’s see if I can find you.”

  Frenzy hums nervously; the computers make bleeping and whirring noises; the time ticks away.

  “You’re still in here,” Frenzy says. “They haven’t erased you, but this will still be tricky. I can’t make whatever I change stick for long. You’ll have…twenty minutes. Any longer and they’ll know I’m in there and start hunting.”

  “I have to be in by tomorrow anyway,” I say, even though he can’t hear me.

  Removing his helmet, Frenzy tosses it irritably to the side. “0600. I’ll start then. Do you really think you can do this?”

  “I don’t have a choice,” I reply.

  This mission is voluntary suicide. I already know that there’s no way I’m going to make it back. But, oddly enough, I’m at peace with that.

  15

  Unlike the rest of the crew, Frenzy didn’t choose to enter the Criminal world. He was barely eight years old when his dad first jacked him into the system. Everybody knows that kind of stimulation can severely damage a growing brain. Frenzy’s dad didn’t much care. He was a poor Mole who was told he was having a kid. When the mother died in childbirth, he was forced to care for his unwanted child. When he first realized that his son was a near genius his first instinct was to figure out how he could make credits.

  That’s when Cremin enters the picture.

  Like rape, hitting your kid isn’t universally illegal. Discipline is discipline, but some parents take it too far. Frenzy doesn’t have full movement in four of his fingers and can’t turn his head fully to the left; just a few parting gifts from his dad. In some ways, Cremin was a step up for little boy Ash, but in others, not so much. Unlike Frenzy’s dad, Cremin didn’t kick or slap when the boy got in the way. He didn’t want to damage the merchandise.

  When Cremin first met Frenzy, he had Frenzy’s dad strap the boy down and jack him in. According to Frenzy, it was Cremin’s way of probing for paternal love. I’m convinced that Frenzy’s dad didn’t flinch when Frenzy shrieked and passed out from the pain.

  Cremin was a Hack, but he wasn’t a fool. He couldn’t jack into the system anymore, a year in the Prison had seen to that, but he still knew how to make a fraudulent living. Teaching kids like Frenzy the barest of manipulator skills, he rented them out as decoys for Criminals. Every sector has manipulators that legally jack into the system; Cops have manipulators who are there to protect it. Cremin’s decoys were instructed to do whatever the Criminal manipulator was doing. The theory was Cops would find the decoy first and try to flush it out, giving the real manipulator the time needed to get the job done. When the kids’ brainwaves were found in the system they were jammed (unable to send signals to the rest of the body) and then a patroller would be sent over to collect the prize. Unfortunately for the kids, their brains would be mush by then.

  But eight-year old Ash Martin was never caught. His brain never turned to mush. Cremin taught him the basics and the little genius figured the rest out on his own.

  After a disappointing night of trying to get Lily to notice him, Frenzy told me that he tried to teach the other kids what he knew. They weren’t supposed to talk to each other. If they were caught breaking the rules they would be bumped to the front of the decoy line, but Frenzy didn’t much care. He figured that if he was going to join the brain-dead it might as well be sooner than later. But there wouldn’t be a job that he couldn’t handle. Cremin eventually stopped buying other kids; Frenzy was all that he needed.

  In the end, Cremin underestimated what his slave’s capabilities. Over the next few years, he worked Frenzy until he could hardly remember his own name; there were days when his eyes and ears would bleed. At twelve, Frenzy was working codes manipulators three times as experienced were still trying to master; at thirteen, he was pulling jobs Criminals swore could never be done; at fourteen, he bared his teeth and killed Cremin.

  Well, tortured and killed is mor
e accurate.

  I was nineteen when I first saw Frenzy. He was walking a few steps behind his master, eyes darting around uncontrollably and limbs quaking with fear. It was Cremin’s belief that his slave needed at least an hour of sunshine a day, so he had a perimeter-node implanted in Frenzy’s cheek. If his slave wasn’t within ten feet of the node’s control it would fire electricity into the surrounding muscles, causing them to cramp and lock his jaw. It isn’t the most pleasant piece of technology. Frenzy still gets agitated when he’s outside.

  At that point in my career I was making a good name for myself. I’d managed to get out of running encrypted voice messages about two years earlier. But then my parentage caught up with me. Nick Redden wanted to destroy me, so he contracted me to kill Ash Martin. He made up some bullshit story about how a fourteen year old was cutting into his business. I didn’t believe him, but I needed the credits. I took the job.

  At night, Cremin kept Frenzy locked in a cage that was barely big enough for him to lie down in. I don’t know what I thought was doing. The night I snuck into Cremin’s hideout I picked the cage lock, opened the door and stepped out of the way. It just had to be done. Frenzy looked just as confused as I felt, but once he saw I wasn’t going to get in his way, he didn’t waste any time.

  I left before he took his revenge. Apparently, a manipulator has to operate on a specific, personalized frequency or risk eventual brain disintegration. Nobody understood this fact better than Frenzy. How many nights did he spend, fantasizing about how he would destroy Cremin? As sensitive and compassionate as Frenzy can be, as big as his heart is when it comes to his loved ones, I’ve never seen anyone take more joy in crushing his enemies.

  If I’d stuck around that night, I would have witnessed the slow and painful annihilation of Cremin’s already warped brain. Frenzy took his time—two days and one night. Then he left him, a quivering and unresponsive mass, on the floor of the hideout.

  I never told anyone that I was the one who let him out. Redden got a story about how the kid had already disappeared by the time I got there.

  Jack found Frenzy after a few months and hired him. I became part of the crew half-a-year after Lyons Emmett gave me a clean bill of health. I wasn’t sure if Frenzy would remember me, but when I walked into the hideout he couldn’t place me.