“Jesus, Kirsty,” he says. “Other than the Hondurans, is there anyone you haven’t pissed off yet?”
She smiles weakly. “There’s still time to annoy them too. So I was kind of hoping someone might know what I should do next.”
“What you do next…” says Kareem with cold, deliberate fury, “is call up Bostov and arrange a meet. And then I waste them all.”
“Right now, Kareem,” she says, “that’s exactly what we don’t do.”
“Can’t believe you just let them all walk out the back,” he says. “We were just outside. If you’d called, we’d have come running.”
“If I’d called, you’d both be dead,” she says. “Look, I tried to keep this my problem and I failed miserably and for that I’m truly sorry. So if anyone can think of a way out of this, let’s hear it.”
“I can’t see why you just don’t ditch the Slate,” says the Reverend.
It’s all anyone ever wants to do – lose the Slate. Kirsty holds up her arm and explains it again. “Federal employees have a chip implanted. Mine’s here. If me and Slate are separated, it uplinks all its files straight to FedNet.”
“That’s clever,” he admits. “So how about staging some street crime and smashing it up?”
“Won’t work,” says Scott Karpel. “I’ve seen the specs of federal Slates and they’re way past bullet proof. Unless you plan on blowing up a whole street, Slate will uplink before you wreck it.”
“What I still don’t get,” pipes up Judy Alexis, “is why you don’t go to the FBI. I mean, an attack on any part of government is an attack on all. At least, that’s what the President’s always saying on the newsfeeds.”
“That’s true if you follow protocol,” sighs Kirsty, “only I didn’t. I made a mistake and I’ve compounded it by talking to Meat4 Power. If they were recording those meetings and they come to light, I’m driving a harvester on a Kansas penal farm for the next ten years. But if that’s the only way to make this go away…”
“No one’s going to prison,” says the Reverend. “Not on my shift.”
“Then we halve the threat by nailing the Bostov team,” says Kareem.
“Taking out Steele and Priest solves nothing,” says Kirsty. “If Bostov want me, someone else will get me.”
“Kareem’s got the right idea for the wrong reason,” says Judy Alexis. “Surely you’ve got to side with Meat4 because Toronto’s their city?”
Kirsty nods then looks around. “Tim,” she says, “what do you think?”
Her janitor thinks a while, looking down at the shotgun on his lap. “I think you should leave with Scott,” he says. “When you make it to the Rockies, I’ll try to meet in another Hub in a year. If I crate a pair of fish and bring along the filtration plant specs, we can start again. I know a guy on the internet who’ll get me false IDs and travel papers. I can…”
“But I’d lose everything. They’d seize my building.”
“Just bricks and mortar, Kirsty,” says Tim. “It’s not worth your life.”
With two corporations after her, packing and running kind of makes sense. “Scott, you think Tim’s right?”
“Maybe,” says Scott, “maybe not. But I’m dead certain that if you side with Meat4 then Bostov will kill you. Have you seen the newsfeeds? Meat4 Power have taken Denver off them so they’ve hit them just about everywhere else. For such a small corporation, they’re frightful mean.”
“So you think I’m dead unless I turn myself in?”
“Not at all,” says Scott. “I think Meat4 Power are sluggish because they work through a chain of command. I think if we can work fast enough, we can move faster than their decision-making process can keep up. That will keep Bostov happy while a result should suit Federal Environmental, since they like winners they can put on the newsfeeds.” He shrugs. “And if that doesn’t work out then we take the first train out of here.”
Kirsty looks around. Tim and the Reverend are nodding their heads, Judy Alexis stares at the ceiling, Kareem scowls at the floor. “I’m not hearing any objections to Scott’s suggestion,” says Kirsty. “So all we have to do now is find a lead and keep moving…”
Kirsty knows that most cases can be closed with a piece of evidence. Find a finger print or a hair and you get a DNA match because everyone’s on a system somewhere. Take a livedrive tissue sample and you’ll know make, manufacturer and individual model number. Being a detective isn’t what it used to be.
She needs a witness, some visuals, anything. Tim pulls out his laptop and pleads with the Bowlerama staff until they let him use the building’s pre-Hub connection. Tim says he knows some guys who run a low-end newsfeed service. “They hang around PD stations and contended G-boy turf and night clubs all the time, hoping to get arrest or firefight or celebrity clips they can sell. Who knows? Maybe they were at Arclights.”
The Reverend gives Judy Alexis a fistful of change to make calls from the paybooths near the Bowlerama entrance. Kareem hangs back and tries to float the idea of a hit on Bostov until the Reverend tells him, in no uncertain terms, no fucking way.
Kirsty and Scott, the Fed and the ex-Fed, sit down and power up Slate and review her Arclights footage, the auto-transcriber utility captioning the interviews real-time. It feels odd for Kirsty to return to the scene of the crime. There are the drag marks of removed victims, there’s that perfectly circular puddle of blood in the middle of the dancefloor. Here’s PD, pushing Meat4 Power’s line but doing it badly. Here’s the FD chief, just doing his job ma’am. There’s the club manager, getting tied up in other people’s lies.
“That’s all you’ve got?” asks Scott.
“Enough to get me into trouble, not enough to get me out of it,” she says.
Tim reports back. “Nothing from the newsfeed guys. They don’t do nightclubs on Monday nights because nothing ever happens.”
“I called around,” says Judy Alexis, “but none of the Grifters were at Arclights either.”
“We need witnesses,” says Scott.
“We could have followed up names from credit transactions,” says Kirsty, “only that data was on the security chipsets they pulled from the club.”
“What about the victims?” asks Tim. “We could call hospitals?”
“Bishop said that victims signed non-disclosures in return for med services,” says Kirsty. “Would you talk if that meant footing your own intensive care bill? I know I wouldn’t.”
She sighs, rubs her eyes and feels deflated. “I don’t know what killed those people, I don’t know how many died, I still don’t know why Meat4 Power are stalling.”
“Think back,” says Tim. “Bishop and PD and FD were there. Who else?”
“Just me,” she says, miserably. “Nosy, stupid, me.”
“What about outside?”
“Nothing,” she says. “PD cruisers came and went, airships took off and…” She remembers what she saw from the street.
“And what?” says Tim.
“As I arrived,” she says, “three utivans were leaving Arclights.”
“You get their registrations?” asks Scott.
“No, but they were heading for the tollroad.”
Kareem doesn’t understand. “So?”
“So inter-District travel pays tolls to encourage local products and services. I could access traffic control through FedNet and watch visuals from the cameras used to monitor flow. But that would mean uplinking to FedNet.”
“Which would mean that if Georgy’s still on the case, he’s going to know you’re using Slate again,” says Tim. “He got that monitoring device from the factory, hasn’t he?”
“Do we have anything else?” asks Scott. “Because if we don’t, we’ll just have to run with this.”
Kirsty takes a deep breath, holds up Slate and toggles the uplink menu from selective to automatic. She feeds in time, date and area to traffic control and sees visuals of three utivans driving in convoy on the empty, unlit tollroad. Their registrations are taped out but it doesn
’t matter, because the cameras track them to their final destination. Kirsty and Scott watch green-tinged, light-intensified footage of them pulling straight into the ambulance off-load bay of the San Fernando Memorial Hospital.
“Scott and Tim, head back to Kirsty’s place,” says the Reverend as the meeting breaks up. “Kareem and Judy Alexis, you two stick with Kirsty. I’m getting the Grifters fight-ready in case Georgy comes knocking.”
Kirsty waits in the Bowlerama while Judy Alexis flags down a couple of Cyclo cabs on the street outside. She feels oddly excited, the fear of yesterday and the chill of Priest’s forty eight hour deadline replaced by a mix of curiosity and resignation. Uplinking to FedNet was the last decision she had to make. Everything from now on feels unstoppable, unavoidable. The Reverend’s making plans for war, Tim is ready to defend her home. And, somewhere out in DIstrict 45, Georgy the scagbander is staring in disbelief at the red light on his Slate scanner and lunging to speed-dial Meat4 Power. She’s sure of it.
Wednesday 25 December
12:11 am
BISHOP HAD SHOT people he’d liked more than Marcus Allen. Two years earlier, before his attempt to hijack the Canadian oil tanker, Bishop had been next in line to command Meat4 Power’s whole Regulated Security Consultancy and Allen had been just another young, ruthless operative. Now Allen held the key role and it was Bishop who stood in the doorway wearing a visitor’s pass.
The pair disagreed on everything, from fundamentals up. Bishop understood the nature of his profession and thought it should remain where it belonged, in the shadows. Allen felt that the power he projected was simply another facet of corporate life and that, like mercwar or urban pacification, it should be legitimized. Allen had been instrumental in the construction of the building they both stood in. Bishop had even followed signs clearly identifying ‘RESC’ along sidewalks shovelled clear of snow by red faced workers.
Under Bishop’s rule, Meat4 Power’s black-ops division would have fragmented and hidden away, operating out of other people’s offices and rented shell companies. Under Allen, RESC was centralized around this structure and even had a uniform, of sorts. Allen favored a black leather jacket and black combat trousers tucked into high leather boots – so did his employees. He kept his dark, shoulder length pulled back into a pigtail – his people did too.
Bishop always gave instructions one-to-one, never made cable access calls, never wrote anything freehand. Allen was briefing around fifty of his personnel at once and was using CueView, a compact laser-scanner that projected written words directly onto the user’s retina. The CueView contained a text document of the briefing which meant that Allen had put it on record, into the domain of fact, out of the domain of deniability. Bishop watched the briefing and seethed. Because there was Allen up front and here was Bishop with the visitor’s pass.
Allen finished his briefing and Bishop stood aside as the room emptied then walked up the central aisle of the briefing room towards Allen. The younger man tried not to smile as he recognized the older one. Bishop fought the urge to punch him.
“I heard you were back,” said Allen. “It’s been a long time since…”
“Since Canadian special forces stormed the tanker I’d seized and forced me into a firefight that nearly reignited full-blown hostilities between the NAU and our neighbors?” said Bishop. “A long time, Marcus. Sixteen months.”
Allen pretended to look hurt. “I wasn’t going to recall such a painful event,” he said.
“Yes you were,” said Bishop. “I thought I’d save you the effort. And this is, as you’d expect, pure formality. I’ll stay out of your way from now on.”
“Balaban briefed me about your little decoy mission,” said Allen. “I’ve cleared the third floor and allocated you personnel.”
Bishop bunched his fists inside his coat pockets. “Thanks but no thank,” he said. “Since Balaban’s using me as a target to draw Bostov out and since RESC leaks like a sieve, I thought I’d show my face here.”
Allen ignored the insult. “You require a base of operations.”
Bishop nodded. “I do. I’m going to find an abandoned block in the quietest corner of the Citadel and hole up there. When Bostov start rocketing RESC HQ, I’ll be well out of the firing line.”
Allen tried to hide his annoyance by looking amused instead. “That’s your call. I’ve put an airship on standby for you too.”
“I won’t need it. I’m not going out.”
“Seriously?”
“I’m not,” said Bishop. “I know Bostov better than anyone. They only need to pick up my trail once and I’m a dead man. They always make it personal so I’m staying in the Citadel.” He turned and headed for the door.
“That’s not how I’d lead an operation,” Allen called after him. “But the very best of luck, Leander.”
“Go to hell, Marcus.”
Bishop had reception call him a utivan shuttle bus and had the driver take him to the town-sized cluster of buildings housing administration, way over on the lake side of the Citadel. It was a long drive and most would have called them but Bishop had his rules. No recording, no video imaging, not ever. He told reception he needed some admin help and they asked him to wait. He told them he was RESC and the head of department asked him into her office in under two minutes. He told her his requirements – the kind of building he needed, the comms gear and supplies, what he wanted from his workers.
“Admin workers, no RESC link, no previous military experiences” he said. “They must all have worked for Meat4 Power their whole career. They need to have taken and passed extra vocational qualifications in their own time and been passed over for promotion at least twice. Most importantly, they have to be over forty, female and single. I need a dozen so send more than that to the office you allocate me.”
“That’s a very specific skill set,” said the department head.
“I’ve got a very specific sort of employer,” said Bishop.
Bishop had reception find Jeffrey Chang for him then arrange a meeting. The utivan ride back was quicker, the snow had stopped and the blowers had cleared the Citadel’s roads. Late afternoon, as the low sun started to dip under the Citadel’s walls, the utivan dropped him off outside one of the many buildings that Bishop had never been inside before. This one was warm and welcoming, the lobby’s dark wood furniture and high ceilings maintaining the pretense that the Citadel was some centuries-old Ivy League college. A man in a white lab coat sat in an otherwise deserted lobby and stood as Bishop approached. He smiled, thirty-something lines around his eyes creasing an otherwise boyish face. He wore a pair of clear safety goggles propped up on his head.
“Mr Bishop?” he said, holding out a welcoming hand that Bishop ignored. “I’m Jeff Chang. I’m responsible for final stage testing and real-world implementation.”
“You know what I’m here about,” said Bishop. “Is there somewhere secure that we can talk?”
“Right here is safe,” said Chang. “Everyone apart from me is off for Christmas. You came to see this, right?” Chang brought a small tube out of his pocket that looked like a commercial nasal spray, only without the label.
“Reboot?” asked Bishop.
“The most significant advancement in livedrive technology since B-spining,” said Chang. “Doesn’t look like much, does it?”
“It’s a stimulant? A steroid? A food-fuel supplement?”
“It’s a way to make all Meat4 Power livedrives better, stronger and faster, all the time,” said Chang, obviously relishing the moment. “One shot of this and our full range will produce nearly thirty percent greater output. And that’s not just new factory models. That’s every unit currently in service too.”
Bishop didn’t know much about livedrives but he knew enough. “Thirty percent power enhancement? Without the surgical addition of more muscle mass, that’s impossible.”
“No, Mr Bishop,” said Chang. “That’s Reboot.”
“Well, that’s why we’re going to war. Wha
t’s the magic ingredient?”
“Have you heard of ebola-G?” asked Chang.
“The flesh-eating bug? Sure I have. It wiped out South Africa.”
“Reboot’s an artificially-constructed pathogen modeled on ebola-G virus,” said Chang. “It’s introduced into each unit with a single-dose inhaler and, after a period of flu-like symptoms, reconditions the wetware entirely. The down time varies from model to model but it tends to be less than a week.”
“You’re holding a can of ebola-G?” He felt his skin prickle.
“Modified ebola-G,” corrected Chang. “Even a plague can be useful. Our study revealed that in its early stages – the first nine hours or so – ebola-G advances through tissue along a highly restricted path, virtually one cell at a time. Affected cells are liquidized while surrounding tissue is left intact.”
“And the point of destroying tissue is…?”
“We call it recoding on the bone,” said Chang, proudly. “Reboot uses a retrovirus vector to deliver altered DNA sequences into live tissue. Specifically, it uses the modified ebola-G strain to liquify existing muscle before reknitting into tighter, denser strands with a proliferation of fast-twitch fibers. The end result is more muscle per volume that delivers greater strength and speed without increased bulk.”
“And it really works? On every livedrive?”
“Only Meat4 Power livedrives,” said Chang. “Reboot is activated by a pseudogene – a redundant DNA link that has always been used as a genetic patent footprint for M4P products. This allows backward compatibility while preventing other manufacturers from using it.”
“And there’s no down-side to Reboot? Nothing I need to know about?”
Chang held up his hands. “Annoyingly, its effectiveness is linked directly to livedrive mass. Meat4 Power’s largest model is an experimental armored vehicle drive system that’s derived from a rhinoceros. When Rebooted, it took a month to convert and logged only a disappointing two percent rise in power output.
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