by Damien Boyes
Elder’s watching from a few metres away. He looks around, skittish and frustrated, but doesn’t intervene.
I try to resist but the men already have me turned around and are hefting me down the stairs, one under each arm, like two friends helping a drunk, except my mind is working just fine.
One of the men has an HK Janus hanging from his belt, MK-IV I think, kinetic/AP/less-lethal combo. Nine shots kinetic, three armour piercing, fifty neutralizer stuns between charges. A later, much more expensive version than the Service’s MK-II.
They must be private security. Well-paid private security.
A neuraliser blast leaves a morty unconscious for fifteen minutes and unable to move much for up to an hour. Lucky for me, I’m not a morty anymore, my brain keeps right on flashing. I get to witness every second of my abduction.
Was Elder here to hurt me, or was he trying to tell me something?
Or was he here for Petra? Her expensive protection is down here with me. Hopefully Vaelyn’s she-goons are better than they look.
I can’t form words. My feet bump down each stair. A long black car waits at the curb. They drag me to it, toes scraping the sidewalk, and toss me into the open floor of the wide back seat where another bodyguard is waiting, his back to the driver, neuraliser pointed at the floor.
The woman from the club sits on the seat across from him, legs crossed at the knee.
She nods at the two men and they return upstairs.
“Good evening, Mr. Gage,” she says. “If now is a convenient time, we have some questions.”
The door slides closed and the car pulls away from the curb without waiting for my answer.
StatUS-ID
[a646:d17e:8670:511f::Finsbury/D//GAGE]
SysDate
[02:12:56:51. Sunday, April 21, 2058]
After the abomination that was the Menagerie Libre, the third floor is less odd—but only just. The lights are low, the music quieter, overpowered by the buzzing thrum of hurried conversations in a dozen languages.
Up here, where it’s darker, the identical skyns’ eyes bleed atomic-green, light oozing from cheap diganics. They lounge on blow-up couches and puff chairs or hunch over livetables, transferring secrets, finalizing deals before the cops bust in.
Shrouded booths line one wall, empty medpods another. So far, only a few of the skyns are abandoned, slumped over tables or discarded where they’d been standing.
Winston Churchill, in thigh-highs, a black teddy wrapped over his enormous girth and mouth plugged with an orange ball-gag, tends bar. Four or five versions of Margaret Thatcher in a matching outfit serve drinks. Bots scurry around, bussing tables.
Weird, but at least no one's being cut in half and eaten.
We’re not going to get anything out of these remote controlled skyns, we’ve got no leverage. We need to find someone who brought their own body to the party—except there’s none of them left. They must have all made it to the roof. Kade stalled us downstairs while everyone who needed to could evacuated.
Shit. We need to get up to the roof.
There’s a metal door to one side of the bar, red light-ropes ushering the way in. But it’s closed. And there’s no handle.
I rush over and try to find a way to get it open but can’t even get my fingertips between the door and the jamb. It must be electronically operated, and unless I can find a switch—
“Officers,” someone calls out from behind us, on the other side of the room.
I spin and squint into the gloom, spot a skyn waving a glass at us. He’d be hard to miss: a strikingly handsome man with a comb of thick red hair jutting from his cranium like a signal beacon. He's occupying the corner furthest from the stairs, lounged out on a purple puff chair with a tumbler of black liquid in one hand and a blonde skyn's breast in the other. He beckons us over with his drink.
“Look at you two fucks,” he laughs, then crinkles his nose “Is that puke?”
“You work for Kade,” I say, taking a guess.
“I do. xYvYx’s the name.”
The Revv lets me clamp down on the shock of recognition before it hits my face. This is the guy from the Undernet? Nothing in his dox said he worked for Kade. Not that it said much about him at all. A hundred questions leap to mind, but Galvan presses forward before I settle on one.
“The Rithmist?” Galvan says, a touch of surprise in his voice.
Even Galvan seems to know of him. I’ve been trying to get xYvYx’s attention for days, and now here he is.
“You're a fan?” xYvYx asks Galvan, smirking.
“Of sorts,” Galvan replies. “You’re under arrest.”
xYvYx’s smirk melts into a real smile and he laughs, sets down his drink, lifts his arm from around the blonde beside him and holds his hands up, wrists together. “Then take me in, officer.”
I get between them. xYvYx isn’t here. I can’t see the back of his neck but I’m sure there’s a transmitter there. He wouldn’t be so cocky if it was his real skyn on the line. “First,” I say, “how do we access the roof?”
“That door over there,” xYvYx says, lowering his hands and wrinkling his nose. “But it’s locked.”
“How do we unlock it?” I ask.
“Not my department,” he says. “You could ask Sal— Oh, but wait. You shot her. Through the neck.”
“There has to be someone else who can open that door.” My fists close instinctively, but I can’t threaten him. I’ve got nothing to threaten him with.
We’ve got nothing at all. Everyone behind the arKade is going to escape.
We’re no closer to Xiao. No closer to the guy who’s stealing people’s minds.
I’ll have nothing to show Inspector Chaddah. She told me the first day, at the station: no slip-ups. She’s going to have my ass.
And Galvan’s too. First week as a detective and he’s going to have a reprimand on his dox.
Goddamnit.
I want to hit something, but what’s the point—?
No, there’s still a chance. Maybe. Maybe, I can salvage something out of this wreck. I can get xYvYx talking.
It’s all we have left.
“We’re not getting that door open, are we?” I ask.
“Kade—” xYvYx says, shaking his head, “—is right and truly pissed at you. She used shocking language.”
“You spoke to her?” Galvan asks.
“Just got off the comm,” xYvYx says, happy to chat. “Let me know you two were on your way up. Said you dusted security like they were standing still.” He forms his fingers into guns, mimes firing into the air, makes ‘pew, pew’ noises, blows out the barrels of his finger guns and pretends to holster them.
He continues. “You know she expects me to pay for the loss she's going to incur tonight. Nearly three quarters of a billion dollars tied up in tech and skyns, and she wants me to pay for it? Said my code was shit? I told that furry bitch she'll have to take it up the ladder.”
“To her bosses?” Galvan asks.
“Fuck, no,” he sneers. “To the laws of the fucking universe. Shit happens.”
“Why would she blame you?” I ask. “If you’re just a Rithmist?”
“I’m Kade’s partner,” xYvYx corrects.
“Partner?” Galvan mutters, not hiding his disbelief.
“More than a partner.” He takes a sip of his drink, slides an ice cube into his mouth, chews it. “I'm the cock that shits the golden spooge.”
Charming. “Meaning?” I ask.
“Meaning?” He looks around his circle of now mostly-limp admirers for support, incredulous. “I make this—” he waves his arms “—all this, happen. I play neural code like Mozart plays the—” he waggles his fingers in the air, looking for the word “—the, whatever the fuck it was he played.”
There's only minutes before the TAC teams arrive, I’ve got him talking, maybe I can get him to brag his way into giving up something, about whoever’s behind these psyphoning attacks, or Kade’s operation. Or what he knows about
Xiao’s shyfts. Something—anything—to justify coming here tonight.
“That's impressive,” I say, pretending. “So you do what? Exactly?”
“Avoid incriminating myself, mostly,” he replies.
“You know anything about arKade guests being assaulted, duped and robbed?”
“You talking about Rene fucking whatsisname?”
“And two others before him,” Galvan adds. “Plus more in Dubai.”
“As a matter of fact, I do. He got hold of my name somehow, begged me for an invite, offered me cash, a night with that cookie-cutter girlfriend he parades around. I told him to fuck off. I don’t know how he managed it, but he pranced in last week—in his own skyn, like it means anything less than he’s a nobody, showing up in person. Heard later he got jacked. Serves him right.”
“Anything else?” I press.
“I know that you shouldn't walk into a building full of dodgy punters doing their dodgy business in rented, untraceable skyns, brag about how much you're worth and expect to be worth that much for very long.”
He makes a good point. “His skyn had shyfts on it. You know where he got them?”
“Lots of ‘mists here with samples,” he waves his arm around at the skyns, one-by-one falling to the floor, “getting their names out.”
“You don’t do samples?”
“Shit no,” he says, playfully straightening his collar. “Got to maintain the value of the brand.”
“Where’s Xiao’s representation?” I ask. “His Rithmist. We heard tonight was in his honour.”
“Xiao’s Rithmist? He’s far too much of a big deal to bother showing his face around the likes of us, but Xiao himself cast in earlier. Opened the ceremonies, shovelled out hits of that new fucking Revv build everyone’s so keen on.” He smiles. He knows what I’m after. Knows I’m about to get nothing out of all this.
There’s a muffled explosion from downstairs. The crowd hushes as more skyns are abandoned. We're running out of time. I need a new tactic.
“So maybe I'll forget about Xiao, make you my new priority. You may not be here right now, but you’re somewhere. Even if I don’t find you right away, you’ll get to live with knowing that I could, at any time, be knocking on your door. Taking down a middle-weight Rithmist isn't the same as a heavyweight like Xiao, but it'll do.”
“'Middle-weight Rithmist?'“ he says, glowering. “Are you fucking with me? I'm the best there is. You'd get a promotion if you brought me in. Head Dick Sucker, at least.”
“You're the best there is?” I ask, feigning incredulity. Playing to his ego.
“Fucking right.”
“Better than Eka?” I ask casually, remembering Elder's lesson on Rithmists. I feel Galvan's double take.
“Eka?” xYvYx spits and rolls himself upright. That hit a nerve. “Everything’s always about Eka. Everyone thinks he’s such a genius—that overrated hack fuck. He cracks that bullshit Second Skyn encrypt the day before I would have, and suddenly he's the legend? I do the same things he does, better than he does—” He jams his finger into his temple, punctuating his words “—but I do it with nothing but blood and neurons and fucking skill. Fuck him. What has he even done lately?”
Blood and neurons? xYvYx isn’t Reszo.
“Eka developed Xiao’s Revv shyft,” Galvan says, and nods, putting another piece together. He looks at me, letting the unspoken implication hang there. He knows I’m Revved. Of course he knows. The questions is, what’s he going to do about it. “I’ve looked at the code. It’s an incredible piece of work, far more advanced than anything I’ve ever seen.”
“And I figured a way for a couple hundred rithms to cast themselves into the same physical location without overloading the link,” xYvYx counters.
“How?” Galvan asks. He seems genuinely interested.
The door to the roof shudders and bursts open with a billow of smoke. TACs with a doorbuster.
xYvYx looks at the door and smirks. “Another time, perhaps. Now, I’m afraid it’s time to be going.” He takes a look at the stream of TAC officers, green targeting lasers slashing through the darkness and cocks his head, raises his voice to be heard over the officer’s shouted commands to hit the floor, and says, “It’s been a pleasure, detectives, but the show’s over. See ya around.”
His skyn collapses and I’ve got my fingers around his lapels before I even realise I’ve lunged for him. His face is empty, his muscles slack. We’ve got nothing.
I open my hands and he flops to the ground. The rest of the crowd is doing the same, skyns slumping as their operators sever their connections.
Seconds later no one is standing but me, Galvan, and twenty heavily armed officers with their gunsights locked on us.
What the hell am I going to tell Chaddah?
StatUS-ID
[fdaa:9afe:17e6:a2ef::Gage/-//GIBSON]
SysDate
[01:59:28. Saturday, January 18, 2059]
The woman from the Fāngzhōu and the bodyguard let me flop around on the car floor as we drive, the windows set to blackout, and I soon lose track of the turns.
Eventually feeling creeps back into my body and I work my way up to my butt. No one moves to stop me so I drag myself up onto the seat next to the bodyguard. He keeps his neuraliser on me, casual. Not expecting to use it. I don't plan on giving him a reason to change his mind
The woman’s watching me with vague interest, her bright red lips folded down at the edges. She doesn’t seem angry. More like resigned. Weary.
There’s been no frantic call from the guards left at the bar, so Elder hasn’t done anything to Petra. Maybe he knows something. He might be there to help.
Dammit, I was so close. Who knows what he could have told me? Maybe he knows what’s going on, was coming to warn me.
“You work for Petra?” I ask when my lips come back online.
The woman just laughs to herself, a sharp exhalation of air through her nose.
“Where are we going?” Neither of them answer. “If this will be long I need to get someone to feed my dog.”
“You don’t have a dog,” the woman says. “Or anyone to feed it. Now quiet, or I’ll have Michaels twitch his thumb.”
I half-raise my hands in resignation. and we drive until the traffic sounds quiet. Soon after, the car’s nose dips and a spiral or two later the tires bump flat into somewhere bright enough to penetrate the blackout windows. We drive another few seconds and come to a stop. The car door slides open onto a compact underground parking lot, too small for an apartment building. Probably a private residence. Interesting.
I wonder whose leg I’ve been peeing on now?
Michaels jabs me with the muzzle of his gun. I climb out and he follows. Two more men in black suits wait for us. One of them has Janus in a his hand, powered up. The other one holds a compact urban assault rifle. Not pointed at me, but ready.
I get the message.
I look at them, at their weapons, raise my hands. “I’ll be good.”
The woman walks off across the lot toward a small chrome elevator, her heels cracking on the concrete, and opts for the dull red door next to it instead, pushes through and lets it close behind her. Probably as much of an invitation I’m going to get.
The two suits fall in ahead of me and Michaels stays close behind. We walk past two big Urban Assault Vehicles and through the red door into a short cinderblock hallway. The woman points to a doorway on her left then goes through a door to her right, ascends a set of stairs.
The men in front of me turn left into a small security office. The occupants wear the uniform of a private security company but other than that there’s no visible screens or any indication of where I might be. They do have a well-stocked weapon cabinet.
A man and a woman sit at blank desks and watch me through privacy vizrs. Two more back at a shared desk ignore us completely as they arrange something in the air between them. The Tz they’re seeing doesn’t let me in on the details.
I’m led down anot
her short hallway and into a small bright room. The door is locked behind me. It’s empty apart from a hard-backed chair. At least they don’t cuff me to it.
So I sit.
I could always duck into my headspace, but the link’ll be blocked down here and watching the morning tick closer on the inside of my head won’t make the seconds move any quicker outside it.
Petra’s obviously connected. She comes from money. But why drag me down here in the middle of the night? I wasn’t threatening her. She seemed perfectly happy to talk to me.
It doesn’t make much sense, but all I can do is wait.
I only hope Elder didn’t hurt her.
I don’t have to wait long. Michaels returns four minutes and twenty-five second later. He brings his own chair, doesn’t sit.
“Finsbury Gage,” he says. “Assumed Gage Gibson. Former cop, currently under investigation for, well, lots of stuff. I’ve seen the list. What’s your interest in Petra Anderson?”
“We’re old friends,” I say. “I wanted to catch up.”
“You met exactly once. Your last day of counselling overlapped with her first. Don’t make me ask again.”
He’s standing easy, away from the empty chair, three meters from me. “Ask her,” I say, and as I finish his fist resting gently against my nose. I didn’t even see him move.
Everyone’s a ninja these days. He probably knows more than I do anyway, no point catching another beating. “A friend of mine was hardlocked, lost a bit of time and lot of rep. He thought Petra might know who’s responsible.”
“Ari Dubecki,” Michaels says, already back to his original position against the wall. “Bit of an epidemic in your circle of friends. Two stocked for assault causing. One self-retired. One completely vanished. Two in hiding until six hours after your restoration. And then Dub, who shows up and wants into your head.”
“You seem all caught up.”
“My job to be.”
I’ve got nothing to hide, nothing he doesn’t know already. So I tell him the truth. “I woke up this guy. I don’t know what I’m involved in, was told Petra might.”