Ones and Zeroes

by Dan Wells

  “Or they could turn Alain over to the police,” said Fang. “They might surprise us by doing the right thing.”

  “The police can’t hold him without evidence,” said Bao, “which, like Sahara said, they don’t have. If they turn him over, they lose their chance to question him. That’s why these megacorps never deal with the government when they can get away with it—and why people like Mr. Park exist in the first place.” He looked at Sahara. “I think it’s worth a shot.”

  “The video is all out there anyway,” said Marisa. “We can’t keep it secret. Spinning it like this is our only chance.”

  “Then I’ll start editing something together,” said Sahara. “We’ll say it’s an augmented reality game or something—a publicity stunt to help advertise Forward Motion.” She leaned back against the bench, zoning out as her vision focused on her djinni instead of the real world.

  “Now the rest of us have a different job,” said Marisa. She remembered the kiss at the edge of the railing. “We’ve got to find Alain.”

  “That’s easy,” said Bao. “He’s in a KT Sigan security office, handcuffed to an interrogation table.”

  “We can hack Sigan’s internal system and try to find him on a camera,” said Anja.

  “No good,” said Jaya. “I already tried hacking in, when you were still at the party, and it’s tighter than a drum in there.”

  “Another telecom, then?” asked Anja. “If you know who he uses for djinni service, you could get into the satellite system and try to pinpoint his GPS. If it’s Johara, Jaya might even be able to do it legally.”

  “That assumes his djinni’s still connected,” said Marisa. “His connection was down to a trickle at the end there, and I bet that TED blast finished it off. Even when he reboots, he’ll stay offline.”

  “It’s at least worth a try,” said Jaya. “I’ve already logged in to my work computer remotely, and run a simple search. Both Alain and Renata are Johara customers.”

  “I love you,” said Marisa. “Can you find where they are?”

  “GPS data is hard to get,” said Jaya, “but I’ll get to work on it.”

  “I’m trying to connect to Renata’s ID,” said Anja. “She’s got herself firewalled like you wouldn’t believe. I can’t even get a request through, let alone an actual connection. I can’t pull any GPS data.”

  “But you’ve found her, right?” asked Fang. “I mean, you’re on her front step, you just can’t get in the door.”

  “Sure,” said Anja, “but that doesn’t tell me anything about her real-world location.”

  “But it’ll tell you about her virtual location,” said Fang, “including any other networks she’s connected to. If she’s linked in to a building’s Wi-Fi, or a cafe or something, you should be able to see it.”

  “Okay,” said Anja, and blinked again, her eyes darting back and forth as she maneuvered her way through the connections. “I’ve got one, but it’s weird. It’s like a . . . a Wi-Fi connection to a single chip. It’s tiny, whatever it is. Something called Wee-Bey?”

  “That’s a clothing company,” said Bao. “They made my camera hat.”

  “Her hoodie!” shouted Marisa. “Renata’s wearing a camera hoodie, just like Bao’s hat—she can take pictures with it and display them. She used it when Park got hit by a truck.”

  “If it has a camera, I should be able to get into it,” said Anja. “Then we could at least see what she’s looking at. What do you want to bet she still has the hoodie on factory settings?”

  “I’ll find the password,” said Marisa, and blinked over to Lemnisca.te. Hackers loved sharing information with each other, both to enable future hacks and to brag about their brilliance. She searched for Wee-Bey, and sure enough there was an entire thread that listed the factory passwords for Wi-Fi clothing. She copied it and sent it to Anja. “There you go.”

  “Got it,” said Anja. She blinked again, entered the password, and then a slow grin spread across her face. “I’m in. I can see everything her shirt sees.”

  “That’s not a sentence you hear every day,” said Bao.

  “I can’t see much,” said Anja. “Looks like she’s in a small, dark room somewhere.”

  “Do you think they already captured her?” asked Jin.

  “We need a tablet,” said Anja, refocusing her eyes on the inside of the cab. “I want to project this so you can all see it.”

  “I’ve got my phone,” said Bao.

  “No,” said Anja, “something bigger.”

  “Some of these cabs have screens built in,” said Jun.

  “Of course!” said Anja. A screen was like a tablet with no computer attached—just a monitor, so people could link it to their djinnis and share information on a central display. Anja blinked again, and the side window lit up with a dark, blurry image. Marisa saw what looked like a hand, casting an angled shadow; the rest was black.

  “Definitely a small space,” said Bao, squinting at the image. “That angle shows the shadow crossing a corner from one wall to the next. The light source is above her.”

  Marisa leaned forward. “But is she captured or hiding?”

  “Patch me in,” said Fang. Marisa blinked, setting her eyes to stream, and shared the connection with Fang just like she had with Jin at the gala.

  “She’s moving,” said Jun. “Maybe . . . climbing up something?”

  “No,” said Bao. “She’s not climbing up a wall, she’s crawling on a floor. The camera’s on her shirt, so we’re getting a tilted perspective. Can we get sound?”

  “Video only,” said Anja. “The shirt doesn’t have a mic or a speaker.”

  “What is she crawling through?” asked Fang.

  Bao smiled. “You see the rivets there? That’s an air duct.”

  “Could she . . . ?” Marisa began. Her heart sped up. “Do you think she’s in the Sigan building? Is she already trying to rescue Alain?”

  The shadows kept moving, until finally the source of the light came into view: a vent in the duct. Renata peered through the vent, and then she pushed herself up and started prying it loose. The shadows jumbled together and Marisa lost track of what was happening, until at last Renata dropped down through the ceiling into the room below, and stood up.

  She was standing in front of Alain.

  “Yes!” shouted Marisa. She punched the air. “Go Renata! Get him out of there!”

  Alain stood up and started talking, though they couldn’t hear what he was saying. His wrists were chained to the table in front of him.

  “I hate being right,” said Bao.

  “Argh!” said Fang. “Why don’t those hoodies have audio?”

  “Try a lip-reading app,” said Marisa. “Accessibility companies use them all the time for people with hearing problems who can’t afford cybernetics.”

  “I’ll look,” said Anja.

  They watched the conversation raptly, trying to work out what Renata and Alain were saying. The video quality was excellent, though of course the camera moved every time Renata did . . .

  . . . and suddenly it occurred to Marisa that Renata wasn’t moving nearly as much as she should have been. Why wasn’t she cutting the chain on the cuffs? Why wasn’t she checking over her shoulder for noises at the door?

  “Hurry,” muttered Fang.

  “Got one,” said Anja. “Give it a sec to install.”

  A moment later the autocab’s voice blared through the vehicle: “—certain the girls got away?”

  “What?” asked Marisa.

  “It’s the lip-reader,” said Anja. “It’s already patched in to the cab’s screen, so I think it just borrowed the voice as well. That’s Alain we’re listening to.”

  They couldn’t hear the answer, though Alain was obviously listening to one. Renata’s face was out of the frame, and a lip-reading app couldn’t read lips it couldn’t see. Alain started talking again, and the cab’s voice followed a split second later: “That’s good. Are you in contact with them now?” Pause. “Can y
ou send Marisa a message?”

  Anja looked at Marisa and raised her eyebrows, a huge grin on her face. “Guess we know what his priorities are.”

  “Shut up,” said Marisa, though she couldn’t hold back her own smile. It made her feel warm to hear him say her name.

  “Tell her I’m sorry I pushed her,” said the cab’s voice, “but it was the only way to save her. I knew the nuli could grab her, and Park got me barely two seconds later.” There was another pause, then he nodded. “Thank you. What did she say?” Another pause. “Well, I guess I deserved that. I did throw her off a building.”

  “Wait,” said Marisa. “She didn’t send me a message.”

  “Apparently she told him that she did,” said Anja. “And that you responded.”

  “She’s lying,” said Bao, already a step ahead of them. “Something’s very wrong here.”

  “Why would she lie to Alain?” asked Jun. “They’re partners.”

  “No, she’s a mercenary,” said Bao. “He told us himself.”

  “Maldita muchacha,” said Marisa. She looked at Alain on the screen. “Do you think she tipped off Park that we were there?” She stopped suddenly, wide-eyed, the possibilities spinning out further. “Do you think she was the sniper who knocked out our nulis on the roof? She’s a crack shot at hunting drones.”

  “She’s been playing us this whole time,” said Bao, smacking the side of the cab. He gestured to the screen, where Alain was listening intently to whatever Renata was saying. “Who knows what crazy lie she’s telling him right now?”

  “This is still just speculation,” said Marisa, though she only half-believed her own protests. “We know she’s lying, but we don’t know why. I can’t imagine she’s working with Sigan—she’s had every opportunity to turn us in, and never has.”

  “You’re sticking up for her?” asked Fang.

  Marisa threw her hands in the air. “Maybe she has a good reason—”

  “That’s an interesting idea,” said Alain. “Are you sure it’ll work?” Pause. “Honestly, very few of my contacts will be helpful in breaking me out of here—I don’t know why you’re so keen on talking to them.”

  “That’s her plan,” said Anja. “She’s trying to get to his criminal contacts—either to work with them or to sell them out to Sigan for extra cash. They probably all have bounties on their heads.”

  “If Sigan can figure out who his contacts are, they can dismantle the entire resistance movement,” said Bao. “They could try to interrogate him, but how much easier would it be to just trick him into giving them up? So they pay off someone he already trusts.”

  “Fine,” said Marisa. “So let’s say she’s a traitor. She sold him out, and she’s probably the one who shot at us. How do we warn him?”

  “I’ve already told you we can’t hack into the building,” said Jaya. “There’s no way to get a message in there.”

  “Girl, please,” said Anja. “I’m hacked into a shirt with a digital display.”

  Marisa’s jaw dropped. “Holy crap.”

  Anja blinked. “The controls are pretty simple, probably the same basic interface Bao uses on his hat. You want photos or video?”

  On the screen, Alain shook his head, and the cab’s voice spoke just barely out of sync with his mouth. “SkullBuddy is an arms dealer—he’s not going to help.”

  “What is it with boys and skulls?” asked Jun.

  “We need to hurry,” said Bao.

  “Can we do text?” asked Marisa.

  “In a wide selection of fonts and colors,” said Anja with a grin, her eyes focused on her djinni. “Ooh! I can make them blink.”

  “No blinking,” said Marisa. “If anything moves, Renata’s going to notice it.”

  “She’ll probably also notice that Alain is suddenly reading her shirt,” said Bao.

  “I’m going to put the words right across her boobs,” said Anja. “She won’t notice anything out of the ordinary. What do we want to say?”

  Marisa thought through it, composing the conversation in her mind. No matter what they wrote on the shirt, Alain’s first impulse would be to ask Renata about it. So the first message had to be a warning. “Okay: take a picture of me.” She looked directly at Anja, and put her finger in front of her lips in a “Shh” gesture.

  Anja blinked. “Got it.”

  “Send him that photo with the words ‘Renata is lying to you.’”

  Anja’s pupils darted back and forth, and she blinked. “Done.”

  They watched the screen. Alain listened to Renata, then his eyes dropped down to the shirt as the message caught his eye. He stared at it, dumbstruck.

  “Come on, don’t just stare at it,” Marisa murmured.

  Renata’s hand moved at the edge of the screen, and Alain looked back up at her face.

  Bao smirked. “‘Eyes up here, buddy.’”

  “Okay,” said Marisa. “Next message: ‘We think she’s working with Sigan. She sold us out, and now she wants your contacts.’”

  “Done,” said Anja, and spoke out loud as she wrote the next sentence: “Say . . . the word . . . elephant . . . if you . . . understand.”

  “What?” asked Marisa.

  “We have to know!” said Anja.

  “But how’s he going to say ‘elephant’?”

  “It’s not that hard,” said Anja. “You just said it.”

  “But it’s hard to work it into the conversation—”

  “Let’s talk about the elephant in the room,” said the cab’s voice. Alain tapped his fingers on the table. “I’m being held on the seventy-ninth floor of the tallest building in Los Angeles, in an armored interrogation room.”

  “Whoa,” said Bao. “Is he talking to us?”

  “While pretending to talk to her,” said Marisa. “He’s feeding us information.”

  “How . . . can we get . . . you out?” said Anja, writing a new message on the shirt.

  The cab’s cheerful voice continued. “The only way you’re getting me out of here is if the higher-ups decide to move me.”

  “Somebody record this,” said Bao.

  “Already recording,” said Marisa and Anja in unison.

  “You’ll have to deal with Mr. Park,” said the cab’s voice. Alain gestured with his hands as he spoke. “But you’ll have a window while I’m out of the room.”

  “What does he expect us to do?” asked Fang. “We’re not a special ops team.”

  “How . . . do we stop . . . Park?” wrote Anja.

  “We’re not going back in there,” said Bao. “You barely got out the first time.”

  “He saved my life,” said Marisa.

  “He threw you off a skyscraper,” said Bao. “Fang saved your life.”

  “He’s one of us,” said Marisa. She thought about the last words he’d said to her: Make yourself matter. She nodded, still staring at the screen. “We have to get him out.”

  “There’s no way—” said Bao, but the cab’s voice cut him off.

  “I know,” said the cab. “I know you don’t have the equipment. So I’m going to—I know, that’s what I’m doing. I’m going to give you one of my contacts. He’ll be able to help.”

  Alain looked abruptly to the side, and a moment later Renata did the same. The camera showed the edge of the doorframe.

  “They hear someone coming,” said Marisa.

  Renata looked back at Alain, and only then did he start speaking. “His name is C-Gull. He can help get me out of here.” Pause. “I don’t know his ID; he takes messages through an old handheld phone, which he keeps stashed somewhere remote. That way no one can track him directly. The number is 9780062347163.” He held up his hand as he finished the number: his pinkie and pointer fingers raised, and the other fingers down.

  “What’s that?” asked Fang.

  “My abuela does that sometimes,” said Marisa. “It’s like a heavy metal thing.”

  “Alain just threw the horns?” asked Anja.

  “I’m more surprised th
at Marisa’s grandma throws the horns,” said Bao.

  “I just tried the number,” said Fang. “It doesn’t work.”

  “He gave us a fake number?” said Bao. “Why would he do that?”

  “Maybe he just screwed it up,” said Anja. “Please . . . repeat . . . the number.”

  Alain looked directly at the hidden camera. “There are people who matter, and people who don’t,” said the cab. “There are ones, and there are zeroes.”

  The image moved as Renata stepped up onto the table and climbed back up into the vent in the ceiling.

  “Wait!” shouted Marisa. “We’re not done!”

  The image went dark.

  “Wow,” said Bao. “That was anticlimactic. A fake number? We’re back to square one.”

  “I think it was a clue,” said Jaya. “He didn’t give us a fake number—he gave Renata a fake number. That last little speech must have been a clue to help us track him down.”

  “He talked about ones and zeroes,” said Fang. “Maybe it’s some kind of binary transposition of that number he gave us.”

  “That’s a ton of possibilities,” said Bao. “This could take forever.”

  “I’m on it,” said Fang. “This plane doesn’t land for six more hours: What else am I going to do?”

  “I’m finished,” said Sahara, finally rejoining the conversation. “I edited the footage of our skyscraper dive, got some good angles on it, and made it look awesome. I posted it everywhere I can think of, with the story about us and Sigan planning the whole thing together as a Forward Motion publicity stunt.”

  “We’re almost to my house,” said Anja, glancing out the window. “I guess we’ll see if anyone’s there to murder us.”

  The screen on the window flashed white, and the cab spoke again: “Ababababurbebaburbeebun.”

  “What on earth?” asked Sahara.

  “It’s a lip-reading app,” said Marisa, looking at the screen. “Renata just dropped out of the vent, and she’s—este cabrón!” She slammed the wall with her fist. “That’s Park.” Mr. Park was standing in front of Renata, centered in the image from the hoodie’s camera.

  “She’s definitely working for Sigan,” said Bao.