by Gary Dejean
Bill sees Chloe first, her face covered in diagonal by white gauze. “What happened to you, girl?” he asks, lighting the pipe.
Malcolm turns to see the sight. “Eww!” he voices, with a note of compassion still. “You look like a Q tip!” he adds, hoping to lighten the tone.
Chloe walks past Bill, who hands her the water pipe. She’s not laughing. “Pigs shot me in the fucking face,” she says, visibly hurting to even say the words.
She crashes on an armchair, breathing in the smoke left over in the pipe, as Bill throws her the lighter. Malcolm turns back to the report: “at the time,” continues the anchor, “Morgan Zhu, who stands accused of leaking classified information, is still being questioned, here at the thirteenth precinct. We haven’t been able to confirm if she got legal counsel, but you have to remember that these rules don’t apply in national security cases such as this one…”
The rasta rubs his forehead. “Shiiiiiit. She gone for good!” he bleats, catching up.
Chloe groans, depressed. “Can we talk about something else?” she asks, feeling like she just spent the night in the septic tank of hell.
They shut up for a second, finding another topic being easier said than done. The news report is still showing footage from the precinct, where reporters are gathered. Malcolm lowers the sound. “We’re gonna go see the fireworks tonight, you in?” he asks.
Chloe cracks the lighter and pulls a long puff from the bong. “Hmm. Maybe…” she says, grateful they’re at least trying, but emptied and exhausted from her operation and the constant stress. She leans over in the armchair, hoping she could just sleep forever.
The noon sun is shining bright outside the precinct but, inside the interrogation room, only neon illuminates the exchange. Morgan is still busy telling the agents about the circumstances leading up to her crime: “… and because I was the only one on the board to vote against it, we still went on with the military contracts. But as head of R&D, I was the only one actually working on them. You see the irony, here?” she shakes her hand, trying to get some kind of reaction from the two agents, whose prosthetic eyes mask most emotions.
“Dr. Zhu,” groans Dimaguiba, “we’ve been here for hours. Stop wasting time! Where is the backup?”
Morgan shakes her head. She speaks with the tone of someone holding a public debate, knowing quite well that the exchange is being enjoyed by more agents beyond the mirror. “Agent,” she starts, “this government has been suppressing political dissent for more than twenty years, through blackmail, intimidation and murder. What do you think they want this for?”
Dimaguiba scowls. “It’s not my place to ask.”
“I disagree. You see, like I said, I felt my voice had been muffled. So when we started discarding prototypes instead of sharing with the scientific community, I felt I was betraying my own beliefs.” Morgan looks away, introspective. “I guess that’s why I started extracting them, and piling them in the Workshop.”
Dimaguiba sighs exaggeratedly. “This has nothing to do with this investigation, you’re stalling,” he accuses, yet contrived to let Morgan’s deposition play out.
“You’re joking, right?” she objects, well aware of what little rights she has in such a dire predicament. “This is motive. You can already place me at the scene, because I’ve admitted to it. And forgive me if I feel that it’s important for me to state, on the record, that my friends had absolutely no knowledge of that equipment’s origin,” she insists, speaking loudly into the microphone, “nor did they participate in the theft in any fashion whatsoever!”
“I’ve had enough of this,” Dimaguiba spits, rising over the table and clenching his fist in front of her face. “Where is the backup?”
At the agent’s impatience, Morgan’s tone switches from virtuous indignation to a friendly quiet chatter. “You know Agent,” she says, “it’s really not easy to remember things on an empty stomach. Are you going to order lunch? I have a very specific diet.”
“We’ll get to it,” replies the agent, unimpressed at her attempt to be disarming.
“Nice goggles by the way,” she adds. “Is that the 40-B variant? You know, I designed these. So it’s really unfair to call me a traitor, when you literally owe me your eyes.”
The paid leave forced upon Angelo and Patti, they wander the Christmas market while trying to have a good time, but taking selfies with new year’s eve 2040 plastic glasses, eating street food together, all of that feels very unusual. Daughter of an emigrated policeman, a law enforcement career woman herself, Patti’s still considering this all as a form of punishment, though admittedly a rather sweet one. She gazes at her boyfriend, his dreary mood made more obvious by all the radiant smiles around them and, trying to understand the Major’s strategy, she decides to approach this all as a team-building exercise.
Finally, she asks: “Can we talk about the elephant in the room?”
“There’s no elephant,” the young man replies, willing to drop the subject altogether.
“Angel,” Patti insists, “I’m sorry I shot your friend.”
“You didn’t! The Major did… and you shouldn’t be sorry.”
“But I am! I…”
“She was a suspect, in a high profile case,” Angelo interrupts. “There’s no room for ‘sorry’. I’m just glad we weren’t using live rounds…”
Patti is surprised by how much sense Angelo is making. All day she’s been thinking he was angry at her, and now she realizes that he’s only genuinely sorry. “You’re right!” she says. “She was fleeing… and she did get away from us.”
Angelo looks away, disgusted to be set against his former friends. He feels relief that the Major has cast him aside, and he’s glad that Patti is along with him. “Let’s not think about that, OK?” he suggests, depressed. “What do you say we get blind drunk tonight? We can watch the fireworks, and sleep on the beach…”
He grabs both her hands between his, looking like he’s begging for simple pleasures. To the young woman this couldn’t be more welcome. “You really are a catch, you know,” she replies.
They kiss softly, pushing away the thoughts they have little control over.
When the workday finally ends, the technicians of the task force shut down all the machines and lock the doors behind them, looking forward to a night of revels. Inside the outfitting room, the mainframe hibernates, silent. Once everybody has gone, made clear by the smart cameras monitoring the hangar, Morgan’s great hack begins.
Triggered by the device in the vents, Morgan’s drones reach out to the overseer’s console, and boot it remotely, using the data extracted by Jake. In the darkened room, its multiple screens light up, launching command windows and shutting down countermeasures as quickly as they pop up.
Farther down the room, automated cartwheels start rolling under the command of the central computer. The shielding units are outfitted with submachineguns loaded with rubber bullets, and disengage from their support.
It’s almost dinner time. The interrogation room smells like Chinese takeaway, empty food cartons and water bottles left over the table from a late lunch. Agent Dimaguiba and his colleague are feeling sticky after spending the entire day in the room with little ventilation. Morgan, on the other hand, retains great dignity, concluding her deposition with an endless monologue.
“I did all that, alone. Although, along my career, I have been contacted by many shady actors, I never worked with any of them. I had no contact with any foreign power or competing company. I wasn’t motivated by money, or the desire to publish classified information. As a matter of fact, I do not believe that full governmental transparency can, or should, be attained. When it comes to the Little Blackjack, which was a finalized prototype, and without a doubt the most dangerous item I ever worked on, my plan only ever was to destroy it thoroughly; which, by the way, would already be done, if you didn’t run your little circus. Perhaps you can pat yourself on the back – I’m sure your superiors will appreciate it – but my point is that I wa
sn’t planning to take it anywhere.”
“Are you done?” Dimaguiba asks, bored and frustrated.
“I suppose I am,” the old woman admits. “Thank you, Agent, for your very civil behavior. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to set things right.”
The irony of her phrasing doesn’t escape the agent, or her blatant attempt to play for time, but there’s only one thing that matters to him now. “Where is the backup?” he asks, his tamed ferocity made audible in his intonation.
“It’s on a hard drive,” Morgan replies, plainly. “The GPS coordinates are 14 dot 4-1-3, 2-3-8 North, by 120 dot 8-7-3, 6-9-8 East.”
Agent Dimaguiba gets up, full of scorn. “Get her to her cell,” he orders his colleague. Looking across the mirror at the other agents, he communicates with them wirelessly as they all pull the map of the swamp where the coordinates converge. Next to a dry road, Morgan’s improvised lair is waiting for them.
Meanwhile, lying on his bed, Jake has plugged into the recharging socket he uses every night, the batteries of the Little Blackjack emptied by hours of physical exertion. David walks in, a nutrient vial in hand and peacemaking intentions in mind. Jake is playing a video-game on his phone, his back to the door; the boy doesn’t turn around when his father sits on the side of the bed.
“Son, it’s dinner time,” David says, apologetic. The boy doesn’t reply, the sound effects of his game answering for him. “Come on, Jake,” the father insists, “you need food like everyone else.”
Jake grabs the vial from his hand and slides it into his torso himself, removing the empty vial one-handed before tossing it expertly in the bin on the other side of the room. Silent, he goes on with his game, obviously brooding. Stunned at what just happened, David sits there in silence, putting his hands on his lap. He feels horribly useless, and tries his best to muster some joy to bring to his son.
“You know, it’s New Year’s Eve tonight. You wanna go out?”
Jake doesn’t even acknowledge the question. David puts a hand on his shoulder, the cold touch of coated titanium chilling his heart. “Tomorrow’s a new day,” he says, encouraging, “and a new year. I love you son.”
He kisses Jake on the cheek and exits the room. The boy waits a few seconds after his dad is gone, and turns off the video-game. His forearms are covered in retractable wires, one for every standard. He pulls one adapted to the port on his phone, and uses the device to boost his reception. Across the city, police frequencies exchange a monotone chatter of code words and street names, which he listens to in silence, a cybernetic spider sitting on a web of radio waves.
Chapter 9
In the early evening, when the skyscrapers shine as brightly as they can, the swamp water drowning the old city reflects their light in a perpetually moving rainbow. Agent Dimaguiba steps out of the NICA helicopter landed on the rooftop of the unstable building, uninterested in the spectacle. His field of view shares that of the other agents, rummaging downstairs through Morgan’s hiding spot.
He joins them, suspicious of the fabric spread across the walls to impede thermal surveillance. Everywhere, his colleagues are already inspecting and archiving every single piece of equipment they find. Dimaguiba walks through the corridor, up to the room where the sarcophagus of the Little Blackjack lies, empty. Sitting next to it, seemingly shut down, Jake’s little robot dog is holding a hard drive in its mouth.
When Dimaguiba bends down to grab the storage device, the dog stands up on its legs and starts barking at him, letting the drive fall on the floor. Surprised but focused, Dimaguiba quickly catches the small object when his vision starts glitching. It begins with just a flicker, before one after another, additional windows pop up in his field of view, displaying video adverts for porn sites, penis enlargement treatments, quick money schemes, and all their entourage of obvious malware.
Other agents in the building start gasping when the pop-ups reach them as well. Still sharing some of their field of view, Dimaguiba yells, furious: “It’s a decoy, warn the precinct!”
“I can’t!” replies the agent closer to him. “There’s a jammer in the building!”
Dimaguiba clenches his teeth while his antivirus software starts closing the windows. Slowly, his field of view regains visibility. The hard drive he’s holding has a sticker on it, of a winking character pulling his tongue out. “Find it, now!” he demands, boiling.
Morgan has just finished eating when the robotic dog sends its signal across the web. Still hidden on top of the grate of the only air-vent in her cell, and riding on the wireless network of the precinct, the device Jake left behind transmits the order. Bouncing on her wheelchair’s on-board computer, to the remaining telepresence drones, the signal powers up the Behemoth and directs the shielding units to follow a route across the compound.
Out in the parking lot, two officers are smoking cigarettes when the initial tremor happens. At first, it sounds like a distant thunder strike, but when the loud noise of metal against metal resonates again, they return to the evidence hangar, the specter of fear looming over them. The shabby building stands, its garage door large enough to slip the Behemoth through on its back, silent until the roof of corrugated steel flies up in the air. Flung by the rising giant, who immediately starts unloading its weapons, the sheet of metal lands next to the terrified agents running for cover.
Emerging from the waist up, the Behemoth is firing foam, glitter and T-shirts all over the parking lot, when the column of shielding units rolls in. Targeting the officers escaping the scene with their submachineguns, they open fire all at once, a hail of rubber bullets falling on the panicked policemen. And as one by one the law enforcement agents fall, the automated drones mark their advance in a cold, synthetic voice.
“Target down. Target down.”
Intimate with the sound of gunfire, the Major walks out of the shower to look out the window overseeing the precinct. Decades of private military contracting have left his dry muscles marked with an array of scars. From here, he can see the entire compound, made a mess by the colossal toy pouring harmless ammunition, and by the much more dangerous automated shielding units.
He grabs his cellphone and calls the Alpha team leader: “Status report,” he prompts.
Bautista shouts through the noise of automatic gunfire. “Sir, our drones got hacked,” he says. “They’re all over the place. We can’t access the exosuits.”
The Major gauges the battlefield from his living room window. “Stay low,” he orders, making sure his team remains operational. “Get to the precinct and help evacuate the wounded.”
Angelo and Patti are eating street food and sharing life-stories when the Major calls. “Vacation over,” he bursts, “get your ass back here. Gillian too. NOW!” They pay in a hurry. The satisfaction of being pulled back is of small comfort next to what sounds like a terrible emergency. In the taxi leading back to the precinct, Angelo feels his guts jumping. For Patti however, the experience isn’t nearly as unpleasant. She focuses on her breathing to keep her heartbeat slow, thinking of Ocampo’s taunt.
Two NICA agents are standing guard in front of Morgan’s cell, when the column of ground drones rolls in. The agents open fire, desperate, quickly rendered blue with contusions as they collapse, unconscious. “Target down. Target down,” the drones keep repeating in a chilling litany.
Inside the cell, the air-vent grate pops out, busted open by the device extending its two handles, and the machine in the backpack falls down on Morgan’s lap. She hangs the bag to the back of her wheelchair, pulling the two handles out and clipping them to her wheels. With a battery pack in the device and small rotors in the handles, she just has to push a thumbstick to propel her mechanical chair forward, out through the grate of her cell opened by a security system on the fritz. When she rolls over one of the collapsed agent’s leg, she does so with vengeful pleasure.
Chloe wakes up, curled up on the old couch of Bill and Malcolm’s apartment, covered by a blanket she doesn’t remember grabbing. Her mouth
is so dry that she drinks the entire contents of a water bottle left to her attention. In the next room, Malcolm is cooking and chatting with Bill. The young woman slowly gets up and walks to them, her legs trembling with hypoglycemia.
“Guys?” she greets, blanket over her shoulders.
Busy with the cooking pans, Malcolm turns to her. “Look who’s back!” he jokes.
Chloe can hardly see straight, she chuckles but remains on point. “What smells good?” she asks, her stomach growling.
Bill points at the food. “He’s making gumbo,” he says. The smell of celery, bell peppers and onion stewing in meat juice fill the room. “You look like you could use some,” adds the mechanic.
Chloe nods, groggily. The pain in her face moves in waves. She pulls a few tablets from a pill bottle Morgan left her with, swallowing them straight. “You’re going out tonight?” she asks, shyly.
Malcolm laughs: “You ain’t goin’ outside with that shit on your face,” he starts, “and I’m not leaving you alone with my machines! We’re gonna baby-sit your ass!”
Chloe’s touched, and in her weakened state she looks like she’s about to cry. Seeing her reaction, Bill tries to keep the tone light: “He’s right,” the biker adds, “you look like crap.”
“Thanks guys…” Chloe replies. She knows they’re just being good friends, avoiding entirely the topic of her mother’s crime and subsequent surrender. The warm and spicy food lets the young woman feel alive again, and maybe even accept the most recent events, when the news breaks on TV of Morgan’s daring escape. Live helicopter footage is showing their collaboratively crafted Behemoth standing, making a mess, while ground drones take control of the precinct’s entrance.