Specter Protocol

by Eddie R. Hicks

  Yanmei found an exit to the maze of steel. Beyond it was an anchored cargo freighter, one of the new high velocity types that could traverse the Pacific Ocean in a day. It had a top deck awaiting cargo, or delivering it, which of the two, Miyuki didn’t know, just that it was important to the mission—

  She heard something.

  Two pairs of feet walking, they were moving across the concrete ground. Yanmei heard the steps too and ran, placing her back to the shipping container. Miyuki did the same to her left. Both women peeked from the corner. Two armed guards patrolled the clearing ahead. Miyuki raised her rifle.

  No guns. Yanmei said telepathically. Miyuki lowered her weapon. At least, not for them. I want you to ghostwalk past them.

  She swallowed and then projected her words into Yanmei’s head. Now?

  I’ll cover you.

  Miyuki wiped her thoughts clean, thinking only of her training the past month. Her hands glowed white when the MEP within her charged. Her telepathic manipulation reached out, touching the minds of those too weak to resist her, the two human guards. The cyberware MEP amplifiers in her body kicked in, increasing her body’s ability to use the strange and exotic particles. An alert flashed on her HUD, her stored MEP was draining, the gauge at the bottom left corner on her HUD shank slowly. She watched intensely as it did. Miyuki was ghostwalking. At least she thought she was.

  She took a deep breath then peeked around the corner, watching the guards. One looked at Miyuki. Fear paralyzed her. But nothing happened. She stepped into the clearing with her rifle pointed forward. Still, nothing happened. Miyuki stood and waited for the guards to turn around and repeat their patrol near the anchored freighter. Neither of them acknowledged her presence, not even when she waved hello to them.

  Behind crept Yanmei, her hands glowing white like Miyuki’s. Yanmei stood ahead of the two patrolling men. She smiled, blew them both a kiss, then she waved goodbye, and walked to the loading pad leading to the freighter, Miyuki following behind.

  “Nicely done,” Yanmei said out loud.

  Miyuki was looking behind, and no guards heard Yanmei talk.

  The duo encountered another set of two patrolling guards walking past Miyuki and Yanmei like it was no big deal. They were ghosts in the night. Miyuki couldn’t believe it, she was ghostwalking, using telepathic manipulation so powerful that those affected sensed only what she wanted them to sense, and that was nothing. She and Yanmei were invisible to them all, but in reality, were visible, so long as she had MEP stored in her body. That reminded her. Miyuki checked the shrinking MEP gauge on her HUD, it was nearing 40 percent. At 0 percent she’d enter the cooldown phase and would be unable to use any of her powers until her body absorbed new MEP.

  Miyuki kept a close eye on the shrinking gauge as they continued—

  Yanmei pulled her back. Something was wrong.

  “Careful!” Yanmei’s white glowing hand pointed up at two cameras looking down. “Remember, we’re not really invisible. They will only see and hear what you want them to. Technology like cameras and motion detectors will still sense your presence. We’re also out of range to manipulate the mind of whoever is watching it.”

  “Technology can detect us then,” Miyuki said and made a note of it. “And I guess other telepaths as well.”

  “No, they can’t.”

  “I thought telepaths couldn’t be manipulated by another telepath?”

  “Specters are a different breed of telepaths. If I wanted to, I could make myself unseen to you or the other Specters. Our MEP amplifiers and unique minds are what makes us different.”

  She looked at the cameras that blocked their path again. “Can Serge deal with it?”

  “If he were closer, yes. But that requires him to be with us.”

  And Serge can’t ghostwalk since he was Yanmei’s weak human pet.

  “So now what?”

  Yanmei beamed. “Follow me.”

  Yanmei backtracked, moving behind the previous duo of patrolling guards, stalking them as prey to be hunted. “I got the one on the left,” Yanmei said, then pointed to his partner. “You take the one to the right.”

  Miyuki followed suit, and just like Yanmei, she stalked the back of the guard to the right, unaware of the ghostly girl behind. She looked at Yanmei.

  “On my mark…”

  The cyberware in Yanmei's hands made noises, their gears moving rapidly. Razor-sharp dagger blades deployed from Yanmei’s fingers and thumbs. Miyuki looked toward her hands, still radiating with white light, and activated the same trick. Her fingernails pulled away like curtains, releasing a display of blades from within. It looked like she had dagger blades for fingernails.

  Yanmei struck first, grabbing the head of her target with one hand, using the blades on the other, and slicing five deep gashes across his neck, damn near digging out his voice box and arteries. Had Yanmei buried her blades deeper, she might have cut his head off. And if Miyuki didn’t react quickly her target would start calling for help. From his point of view, his partner had his throat slit by five daggers at once by an invisible witch.

  The cyberware in her arms gave her the strength and speed to grab the second target’s head, pull it back, and expose his neck. And then with one fast swipe of her right finger blades, Miyuki cut his throat open. Warm and sticky fluid gushed out, drenching her hand red. Bloody gurgling noises filled the silence. Two targets were down on the ground now, their necks squirting arterial blood, recoloring Miyuki’s boots. She had to take a step back, and gasp. Her finger blades had turned red, and they were dripping everywhere.

  Visions of her death returned. This wasn’t the first time Miyuki cut deep into flesh, drawing a fountain of blood, and killed someone. It was the second time, the first time being herself.

  Footsteps echoed. Yanmei was trotting off fast. “I’m about to hit cooldown, stay with me!”

  Miyuki looked at her HUD. Her MEP was near depletion, so she’d be entering that stage too. They’d be visible soon. She followed Yanmei to the container maze, and back to the first set of guards she’d tricked into believing she wasn’t there. Yanmei assumed the previous stalk, Miyuki did the same. She killed for the third time, her right hand now drenched in dripping crimson and bits of flesh stuck to the blades. The white glow of her hands faded.

  She saw why as she checked her HUD, the MEP gauge vanished, and a two-minute countdown timer counted down above it, the estimated time for her cooldown phase to end. Yanmei’s hands were no longer glowing either. The two had become visible to anyone that saw them.

  They returned to the containers and hid behind them. Yanmei laughed to herself. It was as if she enjoyed killing the two men. When she finished laughing, she called for Serge over the radio. When he arrived, the two escorted him back out, past the four bodies gushing out a red puddle from their necks and pointed at the two cameras that held them up.

  Serge grinned, pulled out his tablet, and tapped his hacking app. The red LED on the cameras faded away. Serge’s tablet was like a remote control disabling or enabling the electronically networked world around. The path to the freighter was clear.

  They strode to the docked ship and ran up the entry ramp. Their boots clanked on the metallic surface of the upper deck upon arrival. Miyuki and Yanmei were ghostwalking again at that point. She took point, Yanmei watched the rear, and Serge moved between the two while searching for vulnerable objects with his tablet. Miyuki stopped. A lone man dressed in combat armor and a helmet entered her view. He turned his back to them, but she had doubts that’d be the same when he reached the end of the deck and spun to continue his patrol.

  “Doesn’t look like he will move,” Miyuki whispered. Facing Serge, she asked. “Can you do something about him?”

  He shook his head no. “Not bloody likely, can’t detect anything vulnerable, other than his gun, but I can’t break into that.”

  Miyuki glanced at the lone armored man again, then down at her HUD, 80 left on the shrinking MEP gauge. “We can go through,
” she said. “But Serge can’t.”

  “Just take him out, not like anybody’s looking,” Yanmei said.

  “Roger,” Miyuki reached for her pistol.

  Yanmei reached back and forced her to lower it. “Do you really think that will work?”

  She glanced at the Deckard clenched in her augmented, glowing white hands, wondering why Yanmei objected to its use. The man had armor covering his body, head, and neck, so the blades weren’t going to cut it, both figuratively and literally.

  Think, think, think.

  She winced. This was part of the test, otherwise, Yanmei would have said something, or acted. Did the armor have a weak point? she wondered. To find that answer, she highlighted the target with her HUD and selected the tactical optical scan option from a pull-down menu. A five-second countdown began while she ran a scan. The results outputted over her vision.

  Armor Name: Zhang PA35

  Durability: 100%

  Energy protection: Low

  Armor-piercing protection: Low

  Firearm protection: Medium

  Unprotected areas: None

  Zhang PA35 was lightweight combat gear issued to the police during major raids, it was tough, and the Deckard 56 wasn’t going to cut it. Police used that armor to keep them alive against small arms fire. The Ghostface sniper rifle she had slung over her shoulder, however, had a high damage output according to her database.

  There’s no way he’d survive a hit from it, especially at their range.

  She grabbed the sniper rifle, synced with it, took aim, and allowed what the scope viewed to become what see viewed. She zoomed in, making the back of his head, bobbing up and down, during his walk, encompass her whole vision. In the center of her point of view was the circle of her targeting reticle. Miyuki pulled the trigger. The silencer kept the noise down. An explosion of red pulp in her sights erupted, and then there was nothing but the view of the ocean above the railings that lay at the boundary of the deck.

  When she lowered the rifle, her vision returned to normal. At the tip of the deck lay a man with no head, and the wall to his left had a mess of red coating it. The red slowly dripped to the deck.

  The trio was free to move across the freighter’s upper deck. At the middle stood a Japanese man wearing a business suit and tie, his fingers holding a lit cigarette. And had he been able to see Yanmei, he might have run from the massive needle she deployed from her wrist and used to impale the man from behind.

  When she withdrew the needle, the man’s body began to shake. He collapsed to his knees seconds later, skin bubbling like he drank a witch’s deadly brew. Projectile vomiting ensued when his mouth opened, chunks of his last meal creating an opaque mess on the deck before he fell onto it face first.

  Miyuki looked at the now lifeless man. “He seemed out of place.”

  Yanmei deployed a single blade from her right index finger and used it like a saw to cut the man’s business suit, right down the middle. Once cut, she gripped both halves with her hands, pulling them away. A portrait of tattoos covered his chest.

  “The Yakuza…” Serge said. “Looks like my source was right then.”

  “Yes,” Yanmei said, grinning. “This is the right ship.” She pointed to the top of the seven-story high pile-up of cargo containers on the ship’s deck. “Matsuoka, up top those containers.” Then she pointed to the bridge. “Smith, take control of the bridge.”

  Yanmei stood from the body and walked forward, her rifle pointed outward. “I’ll go have a chat with our Yakuza friends.”

  Sixteen

  Estrella

  “Fuck.”

  “Don’t like these either, Estrella?”

  The hologram Estrella and Bashiir stood in front of and watched intently had her retching. They were in an expensive clothing store, out in the commercial district of the city. The AI that helped run the shop scanned Estrella’s body and projected what it believed she’d look like with various party dresses selected.

  Every single one of them made her gag.

  “How about this one?” The shop’s AI said. Her holographic form switched, showing Estrella standing, smiling, and holding her hip as she wore a silver, shining, long gown which glittered when the light hit it.

  “Yo, I don’t wanna look like a bitch,” she said, waving her hand across the projection.

  It changed, this time exhibiting Estrella, in the same pose, wearing a long black V-neck dress, it lacked sleeves, and had a seductive split right down the middle, the ends of the dress draped the floor behind her, like a long cape.

  Bashiir motioned at the projection, but then again, he did for all the dresses. He just wanted to get out of the shop, and she couldn’t blame him. Only Bashiir and Theo could safely leave the IW district and go shopping with her thanks to their fake facial recognition profiles, and Theo made it abundantly clear, with the number of times he screamed ‘malaka’ that he would not come.

  Bashiir spoke up after adjusting the suit and tie he wore. He had to look the part of a corporate agent from Africa. “Perhaps we should check another shop?”

  She waved him off. “If we browse another store, you’ll have ads speaking to you for months about them.” She grimaced while gazing longer at the black dress. “The corporations are watching you and your buying and browsing habits, don’t forget.” She eyed the hologram again. It wasn’t too bad she figured, a mixture of classy that made her eyes roll, yet sexy mixed into one. The point of the ‘v’ of the top was an inch below her breasts, and the split looked nice, especially if she wore the dress sandals that came with it. She flipped through the menus and pushed the purchase button. “Fuck it, let’s go with this. Not like I’ll be wearing it again.”

  The funds withdrew from her account after she allowed the AI to scan her phone with the payment app loaded. After that, it gave her a ticket number and asked her to stand in line at one table where a single clerk activated a fabric 3D printer and weaved the purchased item on the spot, in Estrella’s case, the shoes and dress.

  She exchanged the ticket for the items and left, marching out into the brightly lit seven-floor shopping mall. They were on the fifth floor and got treated to a view of the indoor bridges, palm trees, and scores of wealthy shoppers moving to and from the shops with their purchased items in hand. There wasn’t an IW in sight, and she was sure the security at the mall’s entrance would turn them away, since Estrella herself was almost denied until she flashed her hologram ID listing her as a Yoshida VIP.

  Bashiir was quiet during the walk to the long escalator ride down to the subway platform. His hands rested behind his back, and his face looked at the flashing splendors of the mall, its signs, and endless advertisements. There were even ads playing on the escalator’s steps.

  A few ads caught her attention.

  Give your spouse the gift they need. A rejuvenated body! Look young and fresh again. Don’t grow old together, grow younger. Visit Regal Genetics rejuvenation on level one just before the food court.

  You won’t even remember you're wearing it. The world’s smallest and powerful smartwatch. The Yoshida Wrist 5, upgrade today!

  “Thanks for coming along, and uh, suffering,” she said to him.

  “It is fine,” Bashiir said. “I’ve always wondered how large marketplaces like this differ from the Dominion. This has been an interesting experience.”

  “What? They don’t have malls ‘n’ shit?”

  “Not like this.” Bashiir fingered the talking holographic ads as people walked past. “Not like this at all, and we do not harvest personal information.”

  The escalator continued its slog into the basement level. Layers of the mall moved up and past them, each layer repeating the same imagery, people spending their money on things the corporations told them to, conforming to social norms the corporations dictated. Wanted posters with Piper and Ray’s faces popped up from time to time. Estrella noticed they appeared a lot when she was around. She worried if Yoshida had data suggesting she was keeping their lo
cation and activities a secret, and the wanted posters popping up a lot were a means to wear her down, make her crack, give in, and snitch on the two.

  They made it to the subway platform under the mall. Bashiir wasn’t a fan of riding behind on Estrella’s bike, so the two had turned to public transit. The environment around them changed from an elegant and classy as fuck mall to a rough subway station, graffiti was the paint coating of choice for the walls.

  “Are Dominion cities like ours?” she asked him.

  “They are, enormous like this yes.” Bashiir looked to the graffiti on his left. “Much cleaner, and humans and IWs walk freely on the street sharing daily life stories.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “It is true. We have learned how to coexist with each other.”

  “Wanna share your secret with the rest of the world?”

  He laughed. It was great to know the strong silent African shapeshifter had emotions. “You and I know that won’t happen. We are the most reclusive and secretive nation in the world for a reason. Nobody gets in or out of the Dominion without permission from our governing body.”

  “Too afraid of us?”

  “Once those living outside the Dominion learn to enlighten themselves as we have, then perhaps, one day we will open our borders.”

  “And stop disrupting satellite images?”

  Bashiir laughed again. “That hasn’t happened in years.”

  “Yeah, I forgot, your guys have satellites with missiles now. Just shoot down any spy satellites that near Africa.”

  “And the Alliance and Federation have satellites with ion cannons, capable of leveling half this city if fired. There’s a reason we don’t want space objects from foreign nations above ours.”

  “The Dominion sounds like an interesting place, why’d you leave?”

  “Our people have become reclusive after the third world war. While we built a paradise, we heard that the rest of the world fell into hard times. I wanted to see if it was true, with my own two eyes, and help those in need if it were.”