‘Jobs came flooding back. Not only was every old factory refurbished and opened, they had to make new ones. Young men and women had work that gave them back their dignity and pride. Not to mention it gave them an estimated life span above thirty, which is a perk the gangs certainly couldn’t provide. Parents stayed in the city because the jobs were there, and the influence of the gangs began to diminish. Violent crime rates plummeted, and the lessening impact of the drugs trade meant that money was staying off the black market and going back into the local economy. Jacob and I checked the warehouses, assigned the “Made in New Cairo” status to products which earned it. We directed the entire consumer body. And we formed the New Cairo Labour Commission – the first NCLC.’
Alice nodded. ‘Yeah, I know this part, Kahleed, I was there for it. Jacob was actually more my husband than he was yours, all things considered.’
‘You’re a middle-class Falkur girl, Alice. You were around. You weren’t there for it, not like the people from round here.’
Oh you pompous ass, Alice thought to herself, like I’ve never met a poor kid who made something of themselves before.
Kahleed continued. ‘So Naj-Pur was getting better, Surja was getting better, the economy was booming and the NCLC were effecting real change on an institutional level. Industrial work brings problems – combined with the Preserve Our Manual Jobs Act, it guaranteed jobs, but it meant that injuries became more common than they had been. The tax revenue the Council brought in meant they could afford to make the essential bio-aug installations free at point of use, but a mechanized generation grew up, dependent on and glad of our bionic implants. People started getting them put in just to help with their jobs or improve their lifestyle. Most, whether they’d admit it or not, got extensive bio-augmentation just because they knew on some level that it was about empowerment. They’d been dealt a bad hand at first. Bio-augmentation looked like a reshuffle to them.
‘And then, a few weeks ago, these implants begin to shut down out of nowhere. Maybe an arm here, eyes there, maybe a faulty knee or so. But then bio-aug lungs, hearts, kidneys. People who’d had their lives given back to them, thanks to this miracle of science, started dropping down dead. I’ve never seen people so scared. Around here, everyone has those machine parts.’
Kahleed worked through a few menus on his portable terminal, then leaned forward towards Alice. He raised his right hand, index finger pointing upwards. The skin parted in a vertical line up the middle, and folded back on thin plates to reveal the small metal frame, vents and grilles of the finger of an artificial hand.
‘Wanna know why I got this? I broke my finger. The doctor told me that either they could set it in a cast, but it was too fragmented to heal straight, or they could replace the entire hand. The skin’s real, grown in a lab from my own skin cells. The muscle in there is all carbon nanotubes – strong, fast, all regulated in my hand. I didn’t know at the time that I’d be pulling triggers as much as I am now, but I can type like a motherfucker too. Before this whole thing started up I was honestly saving my money to get some elective replacements. I mean, there’s a pride in it, in a way. I like them, or at least I used to. But now, I and several million others are trapped in here, knowing that any day could be the one where our arm, or our eye implant, or our heart stops working, like that ballerina we all heard about.’
He exhaled and shook his head. ‘We tried to get out. The people of Naj-Pur and Surja are the most vulnerable people in the city, the ones who’ve been most punished, and now we’re the first people they stopped letting out. All we have left to do is wait in our homes for our bio-augs to fail. They lock us in a cage and they tell us it’s for our own good. And you know what? People aren’t working. The gangs are starting up again. The drugs are starting up again. And I for one have no intention of standing idly by while this place goes back to how it used to be. We’re trying to get people out, and we’re trying to do so by fighting back against a police state. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that taking matters into my own hands is the only course that’s changed anything for the better.’
Kahleed straightened up, an exhausted look on his face. ‘That’s why I’m doing this, anyway. And it’s why Jacob did what he did.’
Alice nodded slowly. That last sentence hurt. She’d heard all this before. She understood why they felt that it was important. There was no need to bring up his name. She was tired and she was angry, and somewhere deep down, in a way which concerned her, she was scared. She had known stability all her life and it had been taken from her. It was as though the ground beneath her had given way, leaving her to plummet into darkness. And she had to admit that something about coordinating the mission three days before had offered her a solid hold to grab to break her fall.
She knew mission coordination. She was good at it.
A part of her had found relief from the chaos when she was sitting at the command terminal. This terrified the rest of her.
The question was whether she could do more good than harm, and whether by the end that would remain a priority.
It was not a question she could answer there and then.
‘How long will it take for the arrangements to get my family out of here to be in place?’ she asked.
‘Another week. Got a lot of favours to call in.’
Alice swung her chair back round, resting her hands on the terminal keys. ‘Until then, I’ll do it. I’ll coordinate your operations. I’ll incriminate myself in your rebellion. But hear me: this is for Jacob and Jacob alone. He cared about this cause, and I’ll see that out. This isn’t my fight. It’s just one he left too early.’
She heard Kahleed’s footsteps recede behind her. ‘That works for me.’
Chapter 10
LINES OF EIP addresses ran across the width of Zala’s field of vision. Each one carried its own branches and paths and processes to and from a myriad of other locations, all following the elusive threads the gssmr file left as it wove its way through cyberspace. Eventually, though, every trail converged on a single location.
Zala’s stomach sank.
The threads which followed the trail of the Soucouyant virus met at an EIP matching a terminal in a software development laboratory owned by GeniSec.
This was the conglomerate whose gratitude Zala had been relying upon for her freedom, and all signs pointed to them being in some way responsible for the virus. It came right from their labs. They’d even routed it through one of their competitors’ server farms.
Zala strained to remember what Matsuda had said.
‘The poorer folk often don’t shell out for the upgrades in the software or the relevant hardware.’
Perhaps it was some kind of forced obsolescence scheme, foisted upon the most vulnerable, in a manner that was killing people? Zala felt sick with anger at the thought of it. Maybe the push in the Council to quarantine the city was just politicians whose campaigns were paid for by GeniSec working with them, maximizing the number of infected. Maybe they hoped it’d drive up adoption of new bio-augs, or, worse, maybe they’d ‘miraculously’ develop some cure and license it to the government for hundreds of millions.
She felt confined, claustrophobic. She found herself staring out of the window of Polina’s apartment down a long adjacent road, lined on both sides with skyscrapers. She was certain that someone must be watching her, someone knew she was there.
‘I see you’, it had said.
She nodded to herself, and began to wonder how best to hurt GeniSec.
Within an hour, she had all the information she’d managed to gather compiled and packaged into a single compressed folder, ready to be transferred if necessary. There were the memory records from the bio-augs which Matsuda had sent her, along with the information she’d gleaned from them – in particular, the recurrence of the vital gssmr.auge file. There was a record of the trace which had tracked down the origin of the gssmr.auge file, with the EIP addresses and relevant connection logs of every bio-aug, termin
al and server through which it had spread. Directories which contained the locations of the EIPs, identifying the trace’s terminating point at GeniSec’s development labs. A complete record of her investigation.
This information could potentially bring down the most powerful corporation, run by the most powerful family, in the United African Democracies, and that made it the most powerful weapon on the continent.
She couldn’t do it alone. She needed to find someone in this city who could help her.
Of course, potential allies who might use these data were few and far between. There were the crazed pundits who made up the conspiracy theorist circuit in New Cairo, who ranted and raved about this sort of thing all the time. They had an audience who would be receptive, and would probably take the information without wasting time vetting Zala. But they wouldn’t know what to do with actual proof if they had it; after all, these pundits thought they had proof already, and they thought the best thing to do in response was to blurt out hundreds of podcasts’ worth of stream-of-consciousness rants. Amongst the people who mattered, their testimony was worth less than nothing.
Then there were the main media bodies in the city. The big corporate-owned news sources would be ideal given their audience size. They’d also probably jump at the chance to discredit a competitor conglomerate and steal viewers away from GeniSec’s NCN network at the same time. Similarly, if there was a worthy independent news agency down there in the city somewhere, this could put them on the map. GeniSec’s involvement in the Soucouyant virus was the kind of story journalists dreamed of breaking, the kind that established legacies. But then, of course, there were the legal ramifications of releasing the information. This had ‘potential libel proceedings’ written all over it at the very least. There’d be police investigations at the highest possible levels, not to mention the potential for reprisals. GeniSec had influence in every layer of the city’s political establishment, be it through campaign financing or the high standing of the Granier family. If they felt the need for revenge, they had plenty of options. Zala was careful, but probably not completely untraceable if someone were actively looking for her. There were the other dangers too. The press was nobody’s friend, after all, and though the continent’s largest conglomerate spreading a deadly virus to an unsuspecting population would be the headline news, a sidebar on the ‘hacker and alleged killer who infiltrated the city to have revenge’ would make for an excellent B-story that Zala could absolutely not allow to run. The last thing she needed was the attention of someone who might be able to track her down and publicize her involvement.
The presence of that ANANSI person was still weighing on the back of her mind.
The real issue, Zala decided, was that GeniSec needed to be brought to justice. But more than that, imprisoning or bankrupting all the people who had ordered this seemed insufficient. This was a chance to punish GeniSec. For the virus, for the conflict and destruction which had claimed lives and crippled people, for Chloe, for her father—
She didn’t want bankruptcy or arrests. She wanted blood.
And now she knew who to get in touch with.
She opened up a custom-built, nigh-untraceable web browser and punched in the EIP address of an old military server, somewhere out in Uganda. This patched into an equally ancient telecommunications network, and then to a number of discarded internal computer servers that had been hijacked long ago by a community with alternative uses for them. Crude web pages opened up, offering shipments of drugs or automatic weapons. Chat rooms buzzed with activity, hosting gunrunners, drug cartels and terrorist groups, as well as mischief-makers, mid-level hackers and the unadvisedly curious. This was the dark internet, a hidden, anonymous enclave of the net inaccessible through conventional means.
The first time Zala had accessed dark internet pages, she’d felt there was something Lovecraftian about it – something old and vast, lurking below the surface of the everyday, something that you weren’t supposed to see. It felt like living in a village with a river running through it, and for generations never leaving your section of the river, then, one day, walking downstream for a few minutes and discovering the ocean. Vast, untapped, free, but with an unfathomable depth which could hide any number of dangers. After a while, it all became pedestrian – just more water – and it rather lost its forbidden allure. Of course, it retained its usefulness; when Zala had been hiding out in the middle of the Khartoum region, coordinating gun and drug deliveries for local gangs was a valuable and lucrative way to get by. What she needed now, however, was the right chat room.
She scrolled down a long list of IRC channels, each full of people. Many had ostentatious, theatrically evil-sounding names which were doubtless the creations of thirteen-year-old wannabe hackers showing off their criminal chic. The scary ones were the channels which were titled with a string of incomprehensible characters. If someone was concerned with anonymity even here, they were someone to be avoided.
Zala went into each chat room in turn, running the IRC channels through her EIP tracing program to search for those with large numbers of people located in New Cairo, or better, in Naj-Pur. With luck she’d walk right into the New Cairo Liberation Corps.
>IRC: S4lH9R454445G
>27 OF 30 LOCATED IN NAJ-PUR AREA
Zala opened a page and logged in using a new account, calling herself Maat8025. In front of her, chat logs at the very least suggested association with the NCLC. This was it.
>Maat8025: I need someone who can get me access to the NCLC.
Immediately, the chat buzzed with braggadocio, as every participant claimed that they had connections. One boasted that he was the one who sabotaged the NDLT server farm, and the chat lit up with disputes that no, they were the one that did it. Zala grinned, but stopped and leaned forward.
>Suchan: If you were the real thing, if you were from where we come from, you’d know how to get in touch with us. What do you have to offer?
>Maat8025: I know who sabotaged the Five Prongs server farm, and I know what they got from it.
>Maat8025: and it’s something the New Cairo Liberation Corps will find very interesting.
>Suchan: I want proof. Upload it to an anonymous cyber-locker. If it’s the real thing, I’ve got higher ups in the NCLC right across the room from me.
The IRC channel was still. The others seemed to have grasped that this was the grown-ups talking now, and wisely stayed out of it. Zala searched through her terminal’s saved files for the records of the security guards’ feed she’d hacked into that night at the Five Prongs. It was low-risk, it didn’t incriminate her especially, and it was compelling, if not indisputable. She sent it to Suchan.
Almost immediately, she received a reply.
>Suchan: Oh wow, okay, this is the real deal. I’ll organize a channel to discuss this all further.
The details of a private IRC channel appeared in Zala’s inbox. She wrapped a scarf around her face, leaving just her eyes uncovered, turned on a voice scrambler in her communications client and opened a video call. The person on the other end picked up; Suchan, it turned out, was an overweight man wearing a balaclava, in a room which appeared to be lit mostly by a monitor. Zala didn’t know if this was normal for revolutionaries, but it looked very similar to what was normal for basement dwellers trying to appear tough on the internet.
‘I’ve verified that I’m the real thing,’ said Zala. ‘Now I need you to.’
‘Just a second,’ said Suchan. He closed down the video call on his end, leaving Zala looking at a blank screen. After five minutes, she began searching chat rooms again, convinced she’d struck up conversation with someone trying to seem more important than he was. As she made her way through a new IRC channel, trying to find a new lead, Suchan called her again.
‘First of all, I’m going to need to see your face and know your name,’ he said.
‘Oh fuck you,’ she snorted, ‘how entry-level do you think I am?’
There was another pause.
‘Type
out an eight-digit number.’
Zala smirked, and entered in some random digits. A minute later, she was sent a link to a site on the dark internet, without any upload source. It was a single video: a tall, muscular, bearded man, looking into the camera.
‘This is for Maat Eight-Oh-Two-Five. Seven-nine-nine-four-oh-two-one-six.’
Zala recognized him from the news. It was the purported leader of the New Cairo Liberation Corps, Kahleed Banks.
Zala turned back to the video call. This guy certainly appeared to be for real. She turned off the voice scrambler and said, ‘Okay, you seem like the ones I need. I’m not going to take off my mask, but my name is Selina Mullur.’
‘Take off the mask. We need to run a check.’
She hesitated and then pulled off the scarf. Suchan stared intently off camera at his monitor, then said, ‘She checked out!’ to someone.
Another man appeared behind him, looking down at the screen. He was wearing a helmet which obscured his face. Upon confirming the check, he pulled the helmet off. It was Kahleed Banks.
‘Hi,’ said Zala. ‘I’m the one who broke into the Five Prongs server farm.’
‘We saw that on the news,’ said Kahleed, in a gruff voice. ‘You really gave those power cords hell.’
Zala felt herself blush, and hoped it didn’t show up on the video call feed. ‘That wasn’t why I was there, that was something that happened when I was running away from the security team that got called in.’
‘Okay, so what do you have?’
‘I’ve been investigating the provenance of the Soucouyant virus,’ said Zala. ‘I think I’ve found something. The trail was run through a security trap in some privately rented servers, so I had to break in and unlock it. But now I think I’ve found the source.’
The Hive Construct Page 11