by Goss, S. E.
Crouched in front of the fence, I reached over my shoulder and pulled the mask over my head.
It was time to clock in.
A soft, crackling rip whispered from the flap of pre-cut fence as I lifted it. Holding it up, I shrugged off my bag and tossed it through. I side stepped in and gently lowered it back into place. Slinging the bag back over my shoulders, I watched as the one camera I needed to concern myself with arched away from my location.
I ran.
I had exactly six seconds before it reached the end of its field, which would give me just under four seconds to make it under the camera. I didn’t watch the camera as I ran; I had learned early on that watching the threat instead of the goal was how you trip. I also learned to slow down as I neared the sheet metal siding of the building. Slamming into it would have been the loudest noise in NerveTown, which, of course, was the opposite of what I wanted. All of these considerations were most likely moot here, considering the one nightwatchman that seemed to work every night of the year, only did just enough to not get canned. But one could never be too careful.
Skirting the wall, I approached the back door. From my bag I pulled a small, hard black case. Inside was a blank keycard, at the end of which was attached a long cord that plugged into my PDA. When I reached the door, I swiped the card through the lock. In a matter of seconds, the PDA found a list of employees with access to this particular lock, which I then narrowed down to non-CCPD personnel, and again to hourly employees. This brought up three. I tapped the now familiar name of the guard and the lock clicked.
I slinked through the door, letting it close against my back, silent as possible. I scanned the garage as I replaced the keycard. This building was a labyrinth of overflowing file cabinets, shelves of metal lock boxes and piles of plastic storage bins. In another room, toward the front of the building were even a couple dozen vehicles, left there to rot since probably before I was born. Making my way to the W section of files, I slipped in and out of aisles, ducking low and avoiding the few, random cameras. Finally, I saw the yellowed, curling sheet of printer paper taped to a stanchion:
WX
I hurried along the uneven row, twice stepping over tipped cabinets, glancing back and forth, waiting for the number to jump out at me.
330124 - 341624…
And the top drawer was open.
On the floor a few feet away was a manila file. Files, papers and trash had littered the floor here for years, but I knew the moment I saw it. The only file not covered in dust and dirt and bootprints. I had been beaten to it.
Picking up the file, I flipped it open. It was a pretty standard dossier on one of Capital City’s finest. I scanned the documents for anything useful.
James Travis Whitten.
Dept. of Para-Military Research - 3 years.
GCI Security consultant - 1 year.
Capital City Police Dept. - 12 years…
Arrest records, health records, eight on-duty shooting reports, height, weight, pedigree. Nothing useful and no flashdrive.
So much for three hours. Tossing the file aside, I went to the end of the aisle. Against the wall sat a desk, with an outdated computer sitting among rolling hills of the ancient rubble of middle aged, stress eating detectives. I had to push aside a layer of coffee cups, candy wrappers and cigarette butts to find the keyboard.
I plugged my PDA into the computer. A thousand number and letter combinations blurred upward along my PDA screen, and after a moment, the computer’s monitor popped on and a dim glow flickered and grew. Soon the screen became a galaxy of glowing specks of dust and cigarette ash, smudges of chocolate and pepperoni grease. I squinted past the mess at the employee menu. After looking again at the now spotlit filth on the keyboard, I elected to use my PDA to navigate the system. Tapping and swiping, I pulled open the day’s logs. Two deliveries, three outgoing, and one shift change. No visitors. I checked the outgoing log.
Nothing of note…
Except.
A BII detective, Bill Tognetti, had pulled the results of a year old rape kit from a file marked BII-331324: Angela Whitestone.
Same cabinet, same drawer.
A jittery, nervous feeling danced up my legs, the feeling of information heating up. I glanced over my shoulder.
Nothing moved.
I dug deeper.
I memorized Tognetti’s employee number, and used the desktop’s ID to get online. On the PDA, a simple (and very illegal) program I had written myself, scanned every use of the number in the last twenty-four hours. In this way, I could almost draw a map of everywhere he’d gone in an official capacity. I found where he had come here, and then he dropped off the grid. I sighed and went back a few steps before deciding to narrow my search to communications. Two reports had been sent to his CO, and one private email.
A private, encrypted message sent from his vehicle, to an unregistered Underground address.
This had to be something.
The frayed office chair let out an echoing scream when I leaned back. I froze and looked again behind me, waiting several minutes before I dared move again. When I was sure I hadn’t been heard, I stared down into my PDA again.
It did not make sense. To send anything to the Underground, or attempt to access it from a registered computer, could be disastrous. Disastrous on such a scale that GCI and every other government in the world had put into place massive safeguards to prevent it. In a sense, the Underground was completely cut off from any standard device. The reason was not to keep anyone from accessing it; all one had to do was find an unregistered computer. It was because of Praetorian. Years ago, the masterminds in NerveTown had devised a series of programs, known collectively as Praetorian, which perpetually attacked any computer or device that wandered too close. The machine was first corrupted, then searched for connections and associations with other machines, to all of which Praetorian sent itself. Only after every link was found, was the computer or device finally destroyed. The first time this had happened, it spread so fast, so wide, that it was a global catastrophe in a matter of minutes. Infrastructure collapsed, transit halted, hospital life support systems failed, ships capsized, and planes fell from the sky. The world went dark. As a girl I watched video and read accounts of the flaming satellites filling the skies, over oceans of crude oil sludge that coated entire islands.
Now, GCI and the Underground held an uneasy truce, staying out of each other’s affairs. GCI was welcome to use unregistered computers to access the Underground anytime they wished, however. NerveTown and the Underground held a philosophy of extreme privacy and freedom of movement on the web that included everyone, even the enemy.
So, for a BII detective to be as bold as to send a message from not only a registered computer, but a police computer, was absurd. Unless the entire Underground was supporting his efforts.
The money I was being paid had driven me this far. Now it took a backseat to sheer curiosity. It had always been one of my defining characteristics, often far outweighing caution, but tonight it was overwhelming.
The Department of ParaMilitary Intelligence…
The Bureau of Internal Investigation…
And the beloved Senator Whitten…
All of them connected in some way. This time, I was sure the dots I was connecting were real.
Breaking into a registered GCI account was nowhere near a challenge; I was in in less than a minute. The message read only:
I have it.
Dock #19. 0100.
That left me only twenty minutes to get at least six miles, which tonight would be cutting it very close. I would have to take a cab. The train didn’t go into that section of Capital City, and the cab would probably charge me extra due to the risk. On top of that, I had to somehow get close enough to Tognetti to lift the flash drive, and all before he handed it off to whomever he was meeting with. I thought again of Pan. If I were her, or anything like her, I would simply gun him down and take it. But I wasn’t Pan.
As it turned out, I w
ould be earning my pay after all.
* * *
I was ten minutes late.
The cab ride had been uneventful, but the traffic and pedestrians had been like pushing through clay. On the way, I reflected on the gravity of the situation, the people involved, and decided to start covering my tracks. I tossed my employee ID; if I could track Tognetti, anyone could do the same to me. I would be charged for the stupid little piece of plastic, of course. I had already gone through seven of them this year. Then I started a background GPS scrambler on my PDA. I doubted most could get past my security systems, but I didn’t want them put to the test. Once we arrived at the shipping lots, I used the blank keycard to snatch a credit number from the ether and overpaid the driver. He didn’t seem to care where the money came from.
A few minutes later I laid on my stomach on top of a semi trailer in the truck lot that sat high above the docks. I had a perfect, clear line to Dock #19, and I scanned the building with a small pair of nightvision binoculars. It was one of the larger buildings, set halfway onto the water, the back was lined with skids for loading boats. On the water, a speed boat rocked lazily, tied and waiting. Four cars were parked in front, all empty.
Nothing moved.
There were plenty of windows, and a few lights on inside, but the place seemed deserted. If this was a simple handoff, they should have been finished by now.
I had to get closer.
I climbed down from the trailer, and walked to the fence. Unlike the storage garage, I had never been here. Taking a knee, I began snipping the fence. I could have walked back out the way I came, but I wanted to keep Dock #19 in sight.
Once I was through I made my way down the debris littered hill, keeping low and mindful of any trash that would betray my presence if I stepped on it. About halfway down, I could see what I couldn’t through the green of the nightvision. Through the windows, most of them broken, was a thin white haze. Once it hit the windows, it was whisked away by the light breeze that came in off the river. It was as if a small fire had been burning inside.
I reached the gravel parking area.
Ducking behind the cars, I peeked around.
Nothing.
No movement, no voices, just the soft lapping of the water. Slinking forward, I watched every direction, waiting to be ambushed. Around the river side, I found a metal staircase, which climbed the side of the building, over the loading docks. At the top was a door, left open about a half inch.
It opened into a small, sparse office. A folding plastic table served as a desk, with a computer, random sheets of paper and legers, a coffee machine. A moisture wrinkled calendar, a sailboat for each month, hung on the wall. It had been there for six years. I opened the inside door to a catwalk, and stepped into Dock #19. Below, I saw the answer to the question of the stillness and smoke.
The room was filled with row after row of stacked boats, all sealed in white plastic. There was a wide center aisle, in which a dozen men had met. Five of them were still there, laying in a rough semicircle, exactly where they had been standing. Three more were several feet away, having tried to run to cover.
It was an ambush.
I could see at least four more who’d made it behind some boats, and theirs were the bodies surrounded by shell casings. They had put up a fight, but as far as I could tell, none had survived. I came down the stairs, into a row of boats, and out into the center aisle. The white cloud of smoke still crawled above me to the windows.
I had just missed this.
About the time I was climbing out of the cab, these men were being gunned down. I
looked among the dead for Tognetti. Everyone here wore torn and faded clothing, baseball caps and tennis shoes. Most had rusted old Tommy guns, Soviet assault rifles or shotguns. Who were these people?
Tognetti was obvious. He was the only one in a cheap suit. He had a sidearm, which hadn’t left his side. He hadn’t even had time to draw. Sitting on his knees, his arms hung to his sides, palms out, as if he were meditating. Most of his face was caved in. A river of dark blood still flowed in small waves down his chest, split around his ample belly and ran along the floor to meet with the collected pool from the others.
It was then that I really saw how much there was. It was everywhere. Puddling around each body, splashed and splattered onto walls and against the white wrapped boats. It seemed nothing in this building hadn’t at least a spread of small red circles that still ran and dripped.
Behind Tognetti, a yellow folding WET FLOOR sign stood as a cruel joke. It was the only thing in here not covered in blood or riddled with bullets, which meant someone had put it out afterward. I was certain I knew who.
Inside the space of the handle on the top of the sign, something had been stuffed. I walked closer, around Tognetti and the pile of bodies, careful not to step in the blood.
It was a white envelope, not stuffed so much as balancing under the handle.
I pulled it out.
It was sealed and in the very center I found a message, a token left just for me to find:
The perfect, small round lips had left a crimson kiss in the center of the envelope.
Pandora.
It was obvious that Tognetti had been one of the other three she was after. I should have known whoever had beaten me to the file was a dead man. She had known what I was after, and she had left it for me. Anyone else would have just taken it for themselves and collected a nice bonus.
I ripped open the end of the envelope and tipped it over my hand. The tiny blue flash drive dropped out onto my palm. Standing there among the carnage, I pushed it into my PDA. It was heavily guarded, but I had no problem getting past the encryption and multiple passwords. What opened was a massive briefcase of text files, several dozen photos, and a few videos. I could have perused these on the PDA, but I preferred a larger screen, especially for the text. The computer upstairs would do just fine.
I decided to check the video files first, as there were only four of them.
The first was nothing special, a grainy, three second surveillance video of Whitten walking into a building. Next was a courtroom video, 45 minutes long. I wasn’t going to sit through that much, so I sped through the video until I saw Whitten, young, no older than 25, and in his starched CCPD uniform, taking the stand. He wore a contemptuous smirk as he placed his hand on the giant leather tome the bailiff held out to him. I sped up again until his swearing was finished and he sat. An offscreen voice asked him his name, badge number, how long he’d been a CCPD police officer, and I sped a few minutes forward again. I stopped when he flashed a movie star grin and began to talk at length.
“So you answered the call at what time?” This time the off camera voice was female.
“About 1730,” he smiled, a born politician. Even with the questioner off camera, I could see when he looked at her, his eyes glittering with a predatory, just under the surface condescension.
“And what time did you arrive?”
I didn’t let him answer. I sped through again, watching for any change in his demeanor, any sign of discomfort. That big, dazzling white smile never once faded. It was an unnerving smile, never affecting the top half of his face. At one point, he became even more relaxed, leaning back in the chair and gracefully motioning with his hands when he spoke. At 15 minutes left on the video he sat forward. I hit play again. All the usual courtroom procedure and stuffy, churchlike protocol had gone out the window. The courtroom had erupted into laughter, and Whitten was going on like a televangelist, gesticulating and pointing. All the while, that horrible, charmer’s smile never left his face.
“So I look down,” he said, spreading his arms out wide and looking at his midsection. “And lo and behold there’s that gosh darn arrow! Sticking right outta my love handle!”
The courtroom gasped in shocked, embarrassed laughter.
“And all I can think to myself is ‘golly! I need to lose some weight!’”
This time the courtroom went wild, the laughter so loud, so
outrageous that the small, cheap computer speakers distorted. Just over his head, on his left the judge was pounding away. But not with the gavel. With his fist. Even he was doubled over in laughter, slamming his fist down and knocking over the honorable judge so-and-so plaque.
A sudden shift in his demeanor silenced the courtroom. His shoulders dropped, his hands folded in his lap, the smile faded. He tucked in his lips and scrunched up his brow, almost going overboard with the expression.
“Anywho,” he took a deep breath. “You can see why I really had no choice but to open fire.”
Above him, the judge had become somber, nodding his head.
I had seen enough.
The next video file opened to the inside of a jail cell, filled with about half a dozen inmates. A large black man stood at the open door, talking to a guard who stood just out of view.
“Look man, I’m just sayin’,” he said, clearly upset.
“I know what you’re saying, T, but I can’t do anything for you,” the guard said.
“But what if you just talk to someone?” T pleaded.
Suddenly the inmate jumped back, scrambling to get away from something off camera, outside the cell. Whitten came rushing in, knocking over the guard. He had a collapsable alloy baton which he swung like a madman out in front of him. The inmate waved his hands in front of his face to protect himself. The baton whipped into his right hand and a loud, echoing snap filled the cell as it bent sideways, wrapping itself over the baton. I winced as I watched what had happened untold years ago. He spun away from Whitten, cradling his ruined hand. Whitten kept at him, kicking and swinging.
“You stupid fucking nigger, he said no,” he screamed. He had lost all control over himself, the other inmates flowed around him and T like water, jumping and shuffling to get out of the way. The guard from the doorway stood and tried to grab onto Whitten’s arm. He spun toward him and swung. The guard ducked and scrambled backward. Whitten again turned to the inmate.