Specter Protocol

by Eddie R. Hicks

  Three military fighters roared overhead, and their loud engines muted Ray’s next words. The fighters had been dispatched from Yoshida’s PMC base he figured, and they soared toward the shuttle. A single missile launched from the lead fighter, and then another from the second, and a third from the third. Each missile struck the shuttle, one after another. A smaller blast of light brightened the dark snow flurry skies once again, and this time the glow didn’t fade. The shuttle became a glowing wreckage of flames crashing down into the mountain’s forested region.

  Ray continued speaking, adding a final option he didn’t consider. “Or Yoshida can blow it the fuck up before they do any of the two…”

  Theo left the car eyeing the impact site via a single pair of binoculars. He shared the binoculars with Bashiir as Ray stood with them, the cold winds biting at his cheeks. By the time it was Ray’s turn to peer through the binoculars Theo had pointed out the location of the crash. Ray looked at it and used the device’s maximum zoom option. The binocular’s HUD scanned flames spreading and turning the forest around into a glowing red-orange field.

  “Well, shit,” Theo said. “That it then? We done?”

  “No,” Ray got back in the car, Bashiir and Theo followed. “Obsidian guided us here for a reason and I think it has to do with that TEK suit they pulled aboard.”

  Bashiir took the wheel, and the car was in motion again, merging to become part of the highway’s traffic. “Where to then?”

  Ray put his glasses on while keeping his gaze at the flames and smoke rising from the forested mountains. “Find us a path to the crash,” Ray said. “We gotta search it before Yoshida does.”

  The drive out of the city, searching for roads leading up the mountains was long. It gave Ray ample time to review the captured video the RWs of the base saw before they met their ends at the hands of the two women. Ray’s attention, however, wasn’t focused on the women that, upon closer inspection, did seem to shift in and out of reality. It was on the lab they were in, and its similarities to the visions of Arianna when she attacked the Zhang Indonesian facility.

  The more he watched the video, the clearer the dreams in his head became. There was a half-completed TEK suit in the lab Arianna destroyed, and the mathematical equations he’d been hallucinating were part of the design.

  Ray made a long face. “I think Yoshida found my missing memory sphere.”

  “Then what they brought aboard the shuttle was…” Bashiir grunted.

  “That’s what Arianna stole from Zhang,” Ray said. “That’s the new weapon. And Yoshida was trying to make their own version of it.”

  And the technology behind it was related to Piper’s special IW only cyberware.

  Bashiir stopped the car. They ran out of roads to drive on. Looking behind, as Ray, Bashiir, and Theo exited, he saw the glow of Anchorage, now just rows of buildings part of the background. To Ray’s side and ahead was the snow-covered forest, and a long icy climb up a hill shrouded in a boreal woodland.

  There wasn’t a sign of civilization in sight. Mother Nature howled her cold icy blow of arctic air.

  “Hope you guys had a big breakfast,” Ray said and adjusted the straps of his backpack.

  He took the first steps into the darkness of the evergreen forest and patted his side ensuring the nanite infused katana was still there, holstered to it.

  It was.

  Thirty-Five

  Estrella

  Estrella shook her head while glancing down at the on-again, off-again air conditioning unit. Today it was on, but the rainfall cooled the city enough for it not to be necessary. That or she’d gotten used to the heat in her high-rise home. Either way, she was walking barefoot in a tank top and shorts, cherry flavor popsicle in one hand, and two-thirds of her vision turned to the data she had Geoffrey download from the Port of Los Angeles administration computer.

  She fell, back first, to the futon couch, kicked her feet up on its arms, and sucked on the popsicle once more. Estrella had gotten to the good stuff in the download, the truck’s license plate. She asked Geoffrey to conduct a search on it using police data, being connected to the LAPD’s network, despite not working with them anymore was a tremendous help.

  The truck in question is a rental, Geoffrey revealed.

  It’s always a rental. Any idea where it was other than the port?

  Unknown. I would suggest we seek Ray’s help in the matter but…

  He ain’t here. Damn and his hacked surveillance cameras in the city would have been a big help.

  The rental depot, for what it’s worth, is Costa Vehicle Rentals. It is in the corporate district.

  Corporate district, eh? She sat up and gave the melting popsicle more of her mouth’s attention. What are the chances they’d tell us who rented it?

  Very small as they likely took a bribe or generous payment to keep silent, if it was a business in that district.

  She pulled the popsicle from her lips. Figured so. Well, I doubt it was Yoshida; they already had what they needed aboard the Kobayashi. It was someone else, a third party that wanted something on it, and some official in Yoshida was okay with sharing the extra storage space.

  And then the Kobayashi traveled across the Pacific to Tokyo. The same freighter that made deliveries to the Port of Alaska a month earlier. Estrella gave the thought a moment longer to process, periodically sucking the popsicle. She swore it made her think better.

  Regal Genetics. She was sitting properly now, her bare feet hitting the floor. I killed the Skulls back in Buenos Aires, now they’re back. We killed a bunch more last month, plus more this month, yet they’re strong enough to piss off LA gangs, and had enough members to send overseas. They gotta be gettin’ cloned from someone.

  Perhaps you are right. And it would explain why the Skulls appeared at the Port of Los Angeles asking for us.

  Someone snitched that I showed up and was snooping around and they got pissed.

  The question now remains, who?

  Doesn’t matter, Piper said so herself, gangs control a lot of the businesses out there. They probably paid one of the dock workers to call them if they saw an RW riding a red motorbike pull up. A knock on the front door thumped three times. Estrella looked at it with a smirk. Speaking of Piper.

  She stood and walked to the door as the data covering her vision dissolved into nothing, restoring her view of her apartment and the front door as she approached it. Behind the door stood the pixie kiwi she’d been expecting. The two exchanged warm smiles.

  “About time you invited me back,” Piper said as she entered.

  Estrella shut and locked the door, and then followed. “And it’s about time you left your place…”

  “I left enough times during the month.”

  “For what?” Estrella laughed and crossed her arms. “To find that call girl?”

  “Sweet-tart. Oh, she was such a lovely thing too.” Piper spun and faced Estrella with that irresistible Mona Lisa smile. “So, what’s up?”

  “A couple of things.” Estrella reached for her tablet pad on the coffee table. She handed it to Piper. “Jack into that and download the newest files. Should contain everything Geoffrey and I compiled about the truck and the shitshow at the port.”

  Piper held the pad and jacked in. Her expression froze for two seconds as the data transfer began. “And?”

  To the right side of the cabinet that Estrella’s TV sat on was a photo, one she’d forgotten about for the past month. Estrella held it to her face examining the bright grins of Piper hugging an Asian woman who was holding a newborn baby. Piper had blue eyes before she lost them due to cyberware augmentation. She couldn’t stop staring at them. It was a snapshot of what Piper left behind in the Federation, and a glimpse into the life Estrella and Yumi could have enjoyed had things gone differently.

  Estrella shook herself out the trance. She put the photo into Piper’s hands, stood back, and watched the emotions change her face when she stared at it. Piper had to jack out. It was too much
for her brain and the cyberware in it to process.

  “I found that at your desk when they were trashing your stuff,” Estrella said. “Totally forgot to give it to you that day. Had a lot going on.”

  There was no response at first, just endless staring and silent emotions. Piper lowered the photo when she was ready to talk. “Like your secret meeting with Lady M?”

  Estrella grimaced. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Estrella…” Piper cut in. “Ray sent me a text and told me.” She tossed the pad to Estrella. She caught it with one hand instantly. “And you didn’t secure your backup files on the pad.”

  With twisting lips, Estrella fingered the pad, flipped through its files, and found its logs of recently accessed files. Piper viewed memory logs Estrella stored on the tablet from the night Lady M offered her a limo ride home.

  She threw the pad down. It clattered on the coffee table, and the side of the pad cracked. “You fucking hacked my pad?”

  “Remember, one of the reasons Nexus sent me to Los Angeles? It was to gather information,” Piper said. “Akane’s programmed to be more than an RW AI assistant.”

  She was stuck now, no way to lie her way out of it. Estrella was working for Lady M, the same corporate body that wanted the heads of Ray and Piper, and gave Estrella instructions to make it happen, no matter what. And she kept it a secret from her newfound friends. And she kept the existence of her friends a secret from Lady M.

  Estrella was a double agent.

  “M didn’t give me much of a choice,” Estrella said. “Showed up in her limo and ordered me in.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us? Yoshida has blood on their hands too.”

  “M isn’t one of them. She wants the individuals doing things behind her back in the company gone. And those people are the ones behind the avatar project and working with the Bald Skulls. It was an advantage I didn’t want to walk away from.”

  And the promise she’d get her freedom when everything was done, which meant handing Ray and Piper over. Estrella never figured out how to get out of that. At this point in the game, she had hoped to have uncovered proof of their innocence.

  “Yoshida made it clear in the media,” Piper said. “They want Ray and I brought to justice.”

  “Yes… I admit. I’m supporting a woman that ordered me to bring you two in.”

  “And you didn’t tell us.”

  “Would you have trusted me if I told you the truth? Would you have told me about Nexus and the IW messengers they dispatched to you with secret orders? How about the real reason there’s so many unregistered IWs around?”

  Piper paused and glanced at the window and the densely packed high-rise apartments across the street covered in the city’s neon glow. “No, I don’t suppose I would have.”

  While Piper’s back was turned, Estrella opened her synthetic arm and pulled out the small circular device she discovered on her shoulder. She held it to her face as her arm shut, it reminded her of the real reason she asked Piper to come cover: Provide an explanation why she put the small tracking device on Estrella when Piper patted her at the port. Ray telling Piper Estrella’s secret must have gotten her to do it, she figured. It’d explain why Piper blatantly hacked Estrella’s pad too. She was searching for more proof.

  “Piper,” Estrella called, and Piper turned around. She chucked the tracking device into her hands. “Don’t fucking do that again.” She pointed at the device Piper now looked at. “You have to trust me.”

  “You got to do the same, yet you’ve proven that you keep things to yourself.”

  “Fine, going forward, no more secrets between the two of us.”

  Piper gave a nod and placed the device inside the storage compartment of her synthetic arm. “Agreed,” she drawled as the arm restored to its previous form.

  “So, spit it out.” She crossed her arms. “What else you keepin’ me?”

  “I’ve kept nothing from you for the past month,” Piper said smiling another Mona Lisa smile. “I’ve told you everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Yes, I have nothing to keep from you.” She held the smile. Estrella couldn’t resist smiling back. “Fuck, you already saw the dirty secrets I have in my place. I didn’t hide that from you, and I have hidden nothing else. You know more about my private life than I do about yours, which is nothing.”

  “Not even when you had my place bugged last month?”

  “Nope, I was asleep at night and you were usually out and about during the day. So, we good?”

  Estrella nodded, uncrossing her arms. “Yeah.”

  “Fantastic, what’s our next move?”

  “Should all be in that file from my pad,” Estrella said. “Those wolves were biokinetic shifters from a Jamaican gang in the industrial district called the Alpha Pack. Gonna see if I can contact them and find out why they choose the Bald Skulls of all gangs to go to war with.”

  “Sounds like you need some backup.” Piper’s voice became pleasant, inviting, and somewhat enticing. “Backup you can trust.”

  “That, I do.”

  Thirty-Six

  Ray

  Thick winter boots crunched through the snow, echoing its sounds in the forested mountain range. Inside those boots were feet wrapped in two layers of winter socks, and Ray wished he’d squeezed in a third layer because his toes were still cold. He questioned whether the parka coats and gloves he, Bashiir, and Theo wore were worth every dollar spent. Like his feet, he was still fucking cold despite the physical work needed to walk through the forest, climb steep hills, or step over fallen tree trunks.

  Wolves howled in the distance. It triggered another pack of wolves elsewhere to howl back. They were in their territory now, a frozen world in which civilization hadn’t gotten around to ruining with neon urban centers. It had Ray wondering why and how a lone wolf entered Los Angeles, back when he and Theo rescued Ellsworth from the Bald Skulls.

  Theo snapped his fingers, not that they produced a snapping noise when enclosed in the thick gloves. “Right, so, Bashiir,” he said to him, white mist leaving his mouth.

  Bashiir replied. “Yes?”

  “Have you heard of the Specters?” Theo asked him.

  Bashiir nodded with his head concealed in the hood. “I’ve read reports, but never seen one.”

  “That’s because you’re not supposed to… until you die.”

  Ray walked backward while he held the straps to his backpack and watched the two walk side-by-side. “What are Specters?”

  “Specially trained telepaths,” Theo said. “They’re so good at mental manipulation that they can convince a crowd of people they aren’t there.”

  “Basically, they can become invisible,” Bashiir added.

  “Yeah, only they ain’t really invisible,” Theo said. “They just mastered the ability to persuade your brain that they are. Rumor has it in order to become one, you have to die first.”

  Ray cringed. “What? Why?”

  “Something fucked happens when a telepath dies,” Theo said. “Their body and mind go through weird changes, and it’s those changes that give Specters their powers. Telepathic people that are clinically dead or are lucky enough to be brought back with cybernetics are rumored to be taken for Specter training.”

  “That is why their numbers are small,” Bashiir added. “Nobody wants to risk dying just to gain the enhanced telepathic powers, and the few that do aren’t lucky and remain dead.”

  Ray turned to face the direction they were walking and was glad he did. He almost walked backward into a tree. He sidestepped and continued leading the group to the source of the black smoke lifting into the snowy skies.

  “I couldn’t see them shoot us from the shuttle,” Ray said, thinking back to their recent highway escape when the shuttle opened fire on them.

  “I couldn’t too,” Theo said. “And those RWs back at the base were struggling to keep sight of them.”

  “But…” Ray drawled. “I was able
to look at them with my drone.”

  “Makes sense,” Bashiir said. “They manipulate the mind, not technology.”

  “You still have your drone?” Theo asked Ray.

  Ray patted his backpack, feeling the drone inside it. “Yep, batteries are low though.”

  “That will be our early warning if they’re nearby,” Theo said.

  “I might as well,” Bashiir said.

  “You, Bashiir?” Theo sounded surprised.

  “My biokinesis,” Bashiir said. “Think about it, the Specters disciplined their powers to manipulate the human and IW mind. But what about beasts such as a lion?”

  “Risky,” Theo said. “I’ve heard of S ranked Specters slipping past guard dogs.”

  “If they are relying on cyberware amplifiers to boost their abilities, they are not true S ranked telepaths, and therefore I should still be able to resist them.”

  “That’s a lot of fucking ifs, man,” Theo said, not sounding convinced. “Ray’s drone isn’t an ‘if.’ It’ll work.”

  Ray forgot how many hours went by since the trek through the snowy mountain forest started. He also forgot what it was like for his hands not to be numb. He was about to bitch about it until he noticed footprints in the snow. The footprints weren’t from either of the three unless they’d been going in circles. He saw four, maybe six sets of footprints. They weren’t walking in circles, someone else was near.

  He stopped, took off his backpack and kneeled, zipping it open. Bashiir and Theo stood around him, watching. Ray pulled out his drone and withdrew his tablet pad. He typed and issued new commands to it.

  The quadcopter drone raised to the skies slowly, avoiding tree branches and knocking a few that it couldn’t, it sent a brief tumble of snow down onto the three. The drone was out of sight now, vanishing beyond the cover of the evergreen treetops. Ray’s tablet allowed him to view its status and cameras as it looked down at the forested mountain range in night vision mode.

  Theo leaned his face closer. “What do ya got, malaka?”