He set the dead commlink back down, then stood. He looked at the sword still in his hand. Then turned and threw it down the sidewalk.
The blade broke when it landed.
“Figures,” Zipfile heard him mutter.
Then he took off, lumbering toward the car they came in.
Yu, Emu, and Zipfile watched him go.
“Betcha that’s actually his car,” Emu said. “He didn’t bother to lift a clean one.”
“No bet,” Zipfile and Yu chorused.
The little Nissan tore out with a squeak of tires and was gone a moment later. Emu put the Americar in gear and looked over his shoulder at Zipfile. “We got what we needed?”
Zip nodded.
Emu pulled away.
Yu twisted around in his seat so he could look directly at her. “So? How bad is it?”
Zip shook her head.
“It’s bad.”
“It’s Renraku for sure,” she said about thirty minutes later, as they watched the Americar go up in flames. They were in Redmond, near the Barrens, leaning against Emu’s Commodore. “A little corp like AVR would never use black IC that quick without a big corp to back them up.”
“It wasn’t just that Dieter was that clueless?” Yu pressed.
“He was clueless,” Zipfile said. She saw the spider firing again in her mind. “But they could have kicked him with a simple reboot; he was running on a commlink.” She stared at the fire and relished the knowledge that the ceiling liner would never touch her head again.
“So the Johnson was telling the truth.” Yu stood, arms crossed, watching the flames.
“Looks that way,” Zip said.
“Bloody hell,” Emu muttered.
“Exactly.”
After a moment, Yu looked down at her. “Can you do this?”
Zipfile looked back up at him. “It won’t be easy.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I know.”
Yu stared at her for another moment, then looked away. Zipfile was glad he did. She was scared. Excited, too, yes—it’s hard to be scared in the abstract of a corp, even an AAA giant like Renraku, when your whole life’s plan was to smash the system that enabled them to exist.
But she saw that spider tearing into Dieter.
She saw his body on the sidewalk.
Empty. Drooling.
Alone.
Where she’d left it.
It wasn’t that he was dead that bothered her. She’d sent a lot of people to their end, back in Pretoria and here since. It wasn’t pleasant, and she’d always have the nightmares, but it was necessary. Bringing down the system would cause a die-off on a scale she couldn’t imagine. She wasn’t naïve enough to not realize that. The very corps she wanted to kill kept the lights on, kept food in the stores, and the tranquilizing stupidity of trid on the air.
But knowing all those people would suffer wasn’t the same thing as watching them die on the sidewalk in front of you.
Or having sent them there, personally, herself.
“Let me work on it,” she told them. She turned and palmed the door to the Commodore. “Let’s get back.”
No one spoke the whole ride back to the safehouse.
“Can’t believe ya did that without me,” Rude said, rumbling.
“You wouldn’t fit in the Americar,” Emu put in, chuckling.
The troll looked at the rigger and then back at Zipfile. “We coulda shared a seat. She don’t take up much room.”
Zip laughed and ignored the quip. “So that’s where we stand so far.”
“Nothing about magic you saw?” Frostburn asked.
“No, but I’m not sure it’d have been obvious,” Zip said. She raised an eyebrow at their mage. “Would it?”
“Probably not,” Frostburn allowed. “I can drive by, see if I can get a sense of anything.”
“I’ll drive,” Emu said. “I need to get some new cars anyway.”
“Ya leave a drone to keep an eye on the place?” Rude rumbled.
“No,” Emu told him. “We didn’t think of it.”
“Shame,” Rude said. “Be interestin’ to see who came ta collect the poor sap.”
“Be less interesting to have whoever it was find our drone and track us back here,” Yu pointed out. “We’ve already been burned once. Literally.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the troll said, waving a hand.
“That doesn’t get us closer to getting in the building,” Frostburn said.
“Getting in the building isn’t the problem,” Zipfile said. “I can get us in. I was just in there.” She looked each of them in the eye for a long moment. “The problem is it’s gonna be hard as Rude’s head once we get in there.”
Rude chuckled. “That’s pretty damn hard.”
“Fine,” Frostburn said, glaring. “It doesn’t get us any closer to getting the job done.”
“No,” Yu said, “it doesn’t.”
No one spoke for a long moment.
“So what do we do?” Emu asked.
“We could put out feelers,” Yu said.
“From way the hell out here?” Frostburn asked. She gestured out the window, toward the Snohomish River. “It’d take a month for these supposed feelers to even get near the city.”
“No one’s bothering us, are they?” Emu snapped. She’d been the one to find the safehouse, after all. “We’ll see anyone coming for kilometers, won’t we?”
“That’s a few klicks more’n I need,” Rude said, patting his holster.
“Careful with that,” Yu said. “Might be loaded.”
Rude grinned. “It’s always loaded,” he said, and grabbed his crotch. “Jus’ like this is.”
“Nice,” Yu muttered. “But really—what next? The Johnson isn’t going to give us forever to get this run done.”
“We’re going to need something to make that building go boom,” Zipfile said. When everyone else stared down at her she shrugged. “What? That’s not my thing, sure, but eish, it’s a big damn building.”
“She’s not kidding,” Emu said. “It is a big damn building.”
“It’s not the size of the building—” Rude began, but the whole rest of the team chorused to interrupt him.
“Shut up!”
“We can’t just disrupt production,” Zipfile put in. “The Johnson said—”
Yu cut her off. “The Johnson said destroy it and make it obvious it was intentional.” He frowned and looked into the middle distance. “That’s not enough, though.”
“Did you miss the part where it’s a big damn building?” Emu asked. She stalked out of the room and into the small kitchenette and rummaged around in the chiller. “Seems like enough to me.”
“He’s right,” Rude put in.
“You feeling okay?” Frostburn asked, staring at the troll. “You just said Yu was right about something.”
“He is,” Rude said. “This time.” He looked around, then shook his head. “The Johnson—the other Johnson, Dennis. He made us look like fools. Nearly got Elfy-pants here killed.” Two big, meaty fists rubbed against each other. “I know I want payback.”
“I do, too,” Yu murmured.
“Me, too,” Zipfile put in.
“We all do,” Emu said from the kitchen. “But how do we get to him?”
“He’ll be in the building,” Rude said, shrugging. “We do the job. Bring the sucker down. He’ll pop like a tick with a building on top of him.”
“No,” Yu said. “I want to see his face. I want him to know we did it.”
“That’s harder,” Zipfile said.
Yu looked down at her with the same expression he wore when his team was losing and losing stupidly. “You’re arguing?”
Zipfile shook her head. “Nope. Just telling you it’ll be harder.”
Harder didn’t mean impossible. It just meant more moving pieces. Zipfile was a hacker. She knew all about moving pieces.
“So how do we do it?”
Rude snuffed and sat down
on the couch. It creaked dangerously, and from the way the center already almost touched the floor, it wasn’t the first time he’d done so. “I figure we blow the place up,” he said, waving his hand at the others. “Y’all figure out the rest.”
Zipfile rolled her eyes.
Yu breathed deep and shook his head. “Emu, you and Frostburn go see if there’s anything magical at AVR. If there is, we’ll figure out how to deal with that, and if there’s not, well…we win one.”
“That’d be a nice change,” Frostburn said.
“Rude.” Yu said. “Blowing up the building?”
“Can do.”
“How?”
“Explosives, Elfy-pants?”
Zipfile watched Yu control himself. “Yes. How much, where is it, and how will we get it on-site?”
Rude frowned. “Oh.”
“Yes, ‘oh.’”
“I know a guy.”
“Go talk to him?”
“I get a ride?” Rude asked, looking at Emu.
Emu traded looks with Frostburn. “Guess we’re not taking the Commodore.” She looked back at Rude. “Sure, come on. We’ll steal something big enough for you.”
Zipfile looked up at Yu. “What about you?”
Yu swallowed. “I’m going to go see if the triads can help us find Simon Dennis.”
“You sure about that?” Zipfile asked. “You’ve…asked a lot of them lately.” She was still a little amazed the gang had just let them into the crash room before they found this safehouse.
“I’ll be careful,” he told her. “What about you?”
“I’ll stay here and try and run down some leads.”
Yu looked at the others. “We ready then?”
“Waitin’ on you,” Rude said, from right next to him.
Yu closed his eyes and breathed out, slowly. “Let’s go.”
A moment later the safehouse was quiet, and Zipfile was alone. She looked around, then giggled. They were a crazy bunch, but they were family. She wouldn’t trade them for anyone, not even her brother standing here right next to her.
She rubbed her hands against her head. Her mohawk drooped against her fingers.
First thing, she decided.
A shower.
A long one.
When Zipfile got out of the bathroom, she decided to run a thought experiment. What if Dennis wasn’t Renraku? The odds were pretty good he was. Why else be working in a Renraku factory? Zipfile snapped a hash into the AR projection in front of her and bit her lower lip.
The target was Telestrian. Who hated Telestrian enough to send them on that first run?
“Eish, that’s a dumb question,” she muttered.
Everyone hated Telestrian that much. Rival corps, UCAS, even lower-middle management inside Telestrian itself. She’d seen any number of cases of runners sent to ruin a boss in the way of a promotion. It was one of the things that drove her so mad about the system: these parasites cannibalized each other every day.
“Got to go,” she whispered, the old words. The system. It got to go.
From her pocket she pulled a datachip, a copy of the one Dennis had given them before that first, fateful Telestrian job. Of course she’d made a copy, not that she’d told the others.
Unless she had to.
Data like this you don’t just throw away.
She slid the chip into a dedicated, air-gapped non-PAN chipreader. It displayed the result in a holo separate from her AR. The copy she’d made had carried over the base read-only memory of the chip itself, manufacturer data and such. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
It was manufactured by the third-largest chip distributor in Seattle.
“Great odds,” she muttered.
She was looking for a needle in a stack of haystacks. Whatever the hell that meant. Seattle slang was weird. These people said the weirdest drek.
Clicking the chipreader off, Zipfile sighed. She picked up a commlink from the coffee table and slid it over her head, careful to keep from pressing down the back of her mohawk. It was hell to reshape after the gel set, especially when it was still damp. She snuggled back against her couch cushions and keyed her commlink.
An eyeblink later, she was on the grid.
The worldscape of the Matrix appeared before her. She looked down at her hand—and it did look like her hand, since she’d long since made this commlink’s persona look just like herself. She stood on the PubGrid again, with the worlds of the global nets around her. She regarded them, thinking, then shrugged and looked at Shiawase Central. A thought, a tug at her mind, and she was there.
It was a moment’s thought to get to Tapper’s, a Matrix dive bar where bored Shiawase wageslaves went to complain about the day and ogle the odd bit of the wider world that came to visit. Zipfile knew it well; she watched games in the off-season with a couple guys who ran a quadrant of the Seattle city power grid.
One of them was there now; she recognized the basic meta-link personal slouched at the bar, nursing a drink. She walked over and sat down next to him. This was the Matrix, so the barstool seemed low enough for her to climb on naturally. If she’d been on her deck, in a different persona, it might have seemed normal metahuman height.
“Jobber,” she said, nodding. She tapped her fingers two times against the bar and a glass appeared in front of her. “Rough day?”
“Same day,” Jobber said. He looked at her, smiled, and nodded. “Just like all the others. Keeping the lights on.”
“It’s good work,” she said. She didn’t mean it. Shiawase did more work than anyone keeping the system alive. She’d like nothing better than to stay on this grid all day, mucking things up and pointing out flaws in the grids. The millions of wageslaves only let the system run because they were too comfortable and complacent to care. Turn off the lights, shake up the system a little, and they’d see the flaws right off.
Maybe they’d help her bring it all down.
But that was a job for another day.
“Doesn’t pay too well,” Jobber grumbled. He held up his drink. In a blink it changed to ice alone in the glass. He shook it. The sound was like coins in a glass.
Zipfile grinned. This was an old dance.
“Got to make ends meet,” she said. “Tough world, even when you’re not betting on the losing team.”
Jobber nodded sagely.
Zipfile smirked. She loved this part. Here she was, on a simple meta-link running nothing more complicated than a basic masker. Jobber was doing the same. This wasn’t the hacking of story and legend. This was just two people, sitting in a bar somewhere in an invisible but very real sea of ones and zeroes, making a deal. Getting some of their own where they could.
It was endemic in the system.
It got to go.
But not today.
“Turns out I got some extra nuyen,” Zipfile said. “Maybe we could have a friendly wager.”
Jobber grunted. “No harm in that.”
“I got a serial number,” she told him. “From a chip your people make.”
“We make a lot,” Jobber agreed. “Which brand?”
Zipfile told him.
Jobber gave a Gallic shrug that would have done Napoleon proud. “Not my department. But I know people.”
“I might guess who bought this chip. I guess right, I keep my money. I guess wrong, you tell me the right answer and win some cash.” She glanced around, but the Tapper was almost empty. Besides, who would object to a friendly wager?
Jobber rubbed his chin. “Depends on the bet.”
“Four hundred.”
Jobber shrugged. “Deal.”
Zipfile sent him the serial number. “Find out who bought this, so you’ll know if you win?”
“Two seconds,” Jobber said. His persona froze while he sent his attention elsewhere. Zipfile dipped her fingertip in the glass in front of her. It was cold, and she once again marveled at the technology that could make her believe her finger was in cold liquid. They could do so much in this world.
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It was so real.
All that power. All that capacity.
And still the system persisted.
Go to go.
Eish.
Not today.
Jobber’s persona flickered as he came back. “Got it.” He pressed his fingertip against the bar and a slip of paper appeared.
Zipfile grinned. “You sure? You remember what happened when you bet against me at that last game?”
“Luck’s gotta change sometime.”
“Okay.” Zipfile sniffed. “John Smith bought that chip.”
Jobber crowed. “Wrong!” He slapped the bar with his free hand. “Pay up!”
Zipfile grinned and transferred the money. Then she held out her hand. “Your turn?”
Jobber slid the paper across the bar. “All yours.”
Zipfile picked up the slip of paper and slid the name into a cache file. She didn’t even look at it. Instead, she picked up her glass and drained it in one pull. Her mind tried to convince her it was good Russian vodka. She knew better than to believe it.
“I’ll get it back next time,” she said, standing up.
Jobber spun on his barstool and eyed her. “Why pay for that, friend?” he asked. “You could’ve gotten it yourself with about five minutes’ effort.”
Zipfile just grinned. “Gotta help a friend out now and then,” she said, and meant it. It was a waste of her skills to hack into Shiawase sales records. Kids did that sort of thing in school to prove each other cool. She could do it, sure.
Eish, she could do it in her sleep.
But it also paid to keep connections open. Someday the system would come down, and all anyone would have would be themselves and the relationships they’d built. Keeping her currency up with people like Jobber was expensive, but worth it.
Two birds and all that.
Someone had double-crossed her team. Her family, the people she was closest to in the world outside her brother.
It was worth the cash to find out who burned them.
Worth more than the cash.
She waved to Jobber and left the bar.
Back on the PubGrid, she looked at the name.
Henrik Gould. There was a SIN.
“What the hell kind of name is Henrik Gould?”
Zipfile groaned and slipped out of the Matrix. She needed a snack before she started into this.
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