I'd been in the noisy kafe with my handler for nearly an hour when a yellow alert flashed along the right side of my vision. A quick acknowledge of the alert produced an AR popup showing that someone in the kafe had been caught observing my conversation one too many times. I couldn't see him, so I tapped into the camera feed from my Toy Poodle, Skittles, who was sitting in her carrying bag on the chair next to mine. The superimposed feed showed a tall, unassuming Aboriginal in a threadbare suit, sitting alone at a table near the corner. I rewound Skittles' feed-the histogram geography of the business district and the curving grace of Sydney Harbour Bridge panning in time with the slow rotation of the kafe-and found that he'd come in nearly an hour ago, a few minutes after I'd arrived.
Despite the tetched-grandmother persona I wore for the benefit of Sydney's sprawl, I was careful when it came to business, and took things like this seriously. My handler, a young elf with delusions of self-importance, caught my mood and stopped subvocalizing immediately. I tapped on the table three times in a place only he could see. Though our business wasn't quite complete, he immediately nodded and stood, saying he'd see me next Thursday, which meant he'd contact me again in a few weeks.
As he left, I masked my discomfort by breathing in the scent of my steaming mug of kaf while studying a chiphead sitting at a nearby table. Then, using the Resonance that had been with me since the crash, I reached out and probed the walls around the Aboriginal's PAN. My eyebrows rose, though I quickly brought my mug up to my lips and slurped to cover the mistake. His walls were good-not state-of-the-art, but close, and not at all what I expected from a guy who looked like he'd just dragged himself in from the outback. I might have been able to crack it, but as closely as he was watching me, as ready as seemed to be for such a thing, he would have sensed it.
Skittles captured his vitals using the instruments clustered in her skull, and I sent them to an identification service I paid more than just a little to use. It usually returned a positive match that was ninety-eight percent accurate within a second, but this time it took nearly five, and when it did return, it gave me something I'd never seen before: a non-match, which meant that the government and most, if not all, of the corps would have no idea who this guy was. It did, however, give probable indications that he hailed from the Northern Territory, perhaps the Tiwis-with some Western European ancestry thrown in for good measure.
I had two choices: call in the security firm I kept on retainer or invite this bloke over. Had he been a random gawker, I would have just ignored him and left, but it was clear he'd been hoping to find me here in this my favorite kafe, and I'd be damned if I'd give it up without a fight.
Moments after I sent him a polite request to join me, he picked himself up, wove through the crowd, and sat across from me. His skin was the color of moist earth, and his hair was wild, going in all directions. His clothes-twenty years behind the times-smacked of someone consciously trying to look like a dreg, but strangely enough his smile, pleasant but knowing, made it seem like he knew I would see through it, and that he didn't care if I did.
No, it wasn't that he didn't care. He had wanted me to understand that not all was as it seemed. He would have been disappointed if I hadn't noticed. And that was when I realized then that this was a much more dangerous situation than I'd given it credit for.
He had an open channel into his PAN for subvocal communication, so I patched in.
Have a name? I asked while a waitress with glowing red piercings sprinkled all over her face poured me a refill.
Macquarie will do. You're Mav?
I nodded, smiling politely at the name he'd given-Macquarie was the most common alias for Aussie clients who wished to remain nameless, the equivalent of Mr. Johnson in the UCAS. What can I do for you, Mr. Macquarie?
He sat forward in his chair, looking at Skittles with a pleasant smile on his face. Before I could stop him, he had reached out to scratch Skittles' ear through the holes in her carrier. Skittles bared her teeth and snapped, and Macquarie snatched his hand back, frowning and shaking his finger. He pulled a napkin from the table's dispenser and used it to staunch the wound.
She doesn't like strangers much, I said.
He glanced at Skittles, frowning at the red blotch on the otherwise white napkin. I have it on good authority you're the one I need to talk to.
Whose authority?
He leaned back into his black plasteen chair, gripping his finger, silent.
I can find out, I said.
Perhaps, but by then our dealings will be done.
What makes you think they're not done already?
He paused, glancing at the crowd over my shoulder. All I need is a simple data drop.
Not my cup of kaf…
I pay well.
Money I've got. Not strictly true, but it wasn't something he needed to know.
Then perhaps the target will interest you.
I waited-my expression appropriately blank-as dozens of nearby conversations washed over us.
Cylestra, he finally said.
And why would Cylestra interest me?
Cylestra has the largest database of Tamanous agents south of the equator.
I prided myself on maintaining my composure, especially during negotiations, but I found my eyes thinning at what he was suggesting. And I saw within his eyes a look of hunger. He knew he had my interest. Clearly he also knew that my second husband had been taken by a Tamanous ghoul nearly thirty years ago. Liam had gone to Adelaide for a sales conference. He hadn't shown up on the second day. The search for him began in earnest on the fourth, and on the fifth they'd found him floating in the Myponga Reservoir south of Adelaide, missing one lung, both kidneys, and his liver. He'd had a bad heart or they might have taken that, too. I'd married twice since then-divorces, both of them-but Liam's death still haunted me.
I realized my jaw was clenched so tight my molars ached. That Macquarie knew this about me was disturbing. Combine that with the fact that he had the capacity to obtain an encrypted tunnel into one of the better guarded biotech corps made the situation frightening, and I'd always told myself that if my alarms were going off, they were going off for a reason, and I'd better listen.
Skittles had started barking-she'd always been a good pooch that way. I shushed her and said, "That's all right, girl. We were just leaving." Without another word, I broke my connection with Macquarie, picked up Skittles' carrier, and left the kafe, taking the transparent pedestrian tube that curved down and around the building toward street level.
Shortly after we joined the flow of busy morning traffic, Skittles resumed her barking, and I saw in my AR overlay that she thought the situation dangerous enough that she had activated the tranq gun hidden inside her throat. I brought up Skittles' video feed and found Macquarie forcing his way through the crowd toward us. I sent a command to Skittles that forced her to calm down-dealing with the fallout of a tranq was sometimes more trouble than it was worth-but I did prime a signal to SkySec that if not defeated within one minute would result in a security team being dispatched.
Macquarie ran in front of me and blocked my path.
I nearly let Skittles shoot him. But there was something in his eyes, a desperation that hadn't been there before. His heart rate was up; so was his breathing. He was pinging my subvocal channel over and over, pleading for a new tunnel.
He was truly worried. It had been a bluff inside, an act, something to get him in with someone bigger than he was used to dealing with.
I should have kept walking-I should have-but in the end I was curious about him, about his story. What had driven him into the sprawl to find me? What wrongs did he hope to right? And who stood to get hurt once the scales had been balanced?
Why Cylestra? I asked after reopening the channel.
He shook his head. I'm not paying you for that.
You're not paying me anything, as I recall.
The database means nothing, then?
I bit back my reply. You could get anyone to use an open tunnel. Why me?
There can be no traces of the drop. I can't leave this to an amateur.
Since the moment I'd heard the word Tamanous in the kafe, my mind had been feeding me memories of Liam I'd long since thought forgotten-the brain had a funny way of squirreling those things away and bringing them back when they were the most unwelcome. In my thirst for revenge, I'd contacted over a dozen shadowrunners, paying them what little I made to search for his killers. They'd found nothing. All of it had been wasted money. Then came the crash of '64 and along with it my newfound gifts as a technomancer. What I had viewed as a blessing quickly became a curse as I failed to master even the simplest of techniques to manipulate the Resonance I could feel all around me, every minute of every day. It seemed like the harder I tried and the more I focused upon my goal, the further away it became. After several frustrating years, the anger became too much to bear, and I gave it all up.
In the months that followed, without even trying, my abilities began to soar. I'd taken it as a sign that searching for Liam's killers was, in the grand scheme of things, fruitless. Strange that now, when I thought I'd finally managed to leave all of it behind, an opportunity to exact some revenge was presenting itself. Karma at work, I told myself.
A troll shouldered his way through the tunnel, nudging both me and Macquarie aside. Skittles barked at his retreating form.
Will you do it? he asked.
Give me the key and the package.
The tunnel's good for another three days, he said while transferring the data through a secure socket.
Come to the kafe in two days, and I'll let you know how it went.
He nodded, a curious look on his face, and then he turned and walked away, moving through the crowd as if he'd been living in the sprawl all his life.
Before I lost sight of him, I tagged him and sent a request to SkySec, who in addition to straightforward security dabbled in surveillance-they leased time from the city's traffic cameras for just this purpose. With any luck, I'd know where Macquarie was holing up by the end of the day. • • •
I returned home and released Skittles from her carrier. She circled around the room several times before jumping up to the beaten brown chair she'd long ago claimed as her own. She barked several times-no doubt still excited from all the goings on-before finally settling into the familiar curves of her hopelessly matted pillow.
No sooner had I sat down on a recliner and ordered the windows to shutter themselves than I received a message from SkySec: they'd lost Macquarie. I sent back a request to provide details-I needed to know how he could do such a thing-but my hopes were small that a useful answer would ever be returned. The pretty penny I paid every month was worth it, but SkySec was not known for value added service.
After swiveling the chair away from the windows, I reclined and gave my aching knees a rest. It was time to find out what I could about this deal.
I was curious about the Trojan, but given how Macquarie had lost SkySec, the possibility of finding out more about him was simply too tempting, so I decided to have a little look-see before getting down to business. I knew a probable place of origin, and I knew he had a beef with Cylestra, so that's where I began.
It was at times like this, when I was physically tired but mentally curious, that the Resonance called to me most strongly. Sometime I found myself having to fight the urge, but now, luckily, I could simply let it take me. And it did. The reality around me shifted, and though there was a brief moment of reorientation, it quickly felt like I belonged there, perhaps more so than the physical world. There, I was part of the world, and it was a part of me. I was not bound by the frailty of my form, nor the aches and pains that had collected like driftwood along the shore. Here, I was free to go where I would, unfettered.
I bent myself to my task, sifting through tera after tera of news releases, images, blogs, vlogs, memory uploads. I took each of them and played them against the others, building the pieces of the puzzle first and then, one-by-one, piecing them together until the picture began to form.
Finally, twelve hours after entering, I found it.
Eight years ago, an Aboriginal girl named Sindala Hendesa had, with the consent of her parents, joined a drug trial to restore her failing kidneys. It was a process that was advertised as costing half as much as growing a new one, and since it was a final-phase trial, it was subsidized and would cost them even less. Cylestra was administering the program through a loosely veiled partnership with the Northern Territory government.
Bathurst, and especially Sindala's village, was not wealthy. The doctors were subpar, as was the nearest hospital, which was where Sindala would have been taken had the Cylestra medical team not offered their services, so it was natural that Sindala's parents would jump at any small increase in their daughter's chances. The treatments continued for several months, and Sindala showed signs of improvement.
But then there was a reversal. Sindala's organs-not just her kidneys-began growing at an alarming rate. By the time they decided to drop her from the program, her lungs had enlarged by thirty percent; her heart was twice as large as it should have been, and her kidneys had tripled in size. Within another few months, many of the subjects began experiencing similar issues, forcing Cylestra to abandon the trial altogether. Shortly after, Cylestra simply picked up and left, sidestepping the repeated requests for follow-up visits.
Sindala's father, of course, was my Mr. Macquarie-real name, Koorong Hendesa-and her mother was Allora. As Sindala's health deteriorated, Koorong and Allora fought in the courts for Cylestra to pay for new organs. Their lawyer, one of the few that would agree to take on a small-stakes claim against a Double-A corp, tried to argue that the side effects were much more damaging than had been accounted for in the initial discussions with the Hendesas. The judge, in the end, ruled for the plaintiffs, but it was a sham-the Hendesas were awarded the exact sum of money they had paid to Cylestra, an amount that would fail to even dent the mounting bills and future treatments that Sindala would need.
After the trial, with Koorong and Allora's savings drained, the village chipped in, but they could afford little more than an ancient dialysis machine.
Sindala died two months later.
An alarm from the lobby of my apartment complex broke my train of thought. I tapped into the intercam and found Koorong speaking feverishly into it.
"Please, Mav, let me in, we need to talk." He pressed on the button for my apartment feverishly. "Mav-"
"I don't appreciate clients following me home, Koorong."
He paused at the use of his real name. "Can I come up?"
I let him in, and a minute later he had reached my apartment on the 132nd floor. He gave Skittles a look of consternation that I couldn't quite interpret. Perhaps the bite earlier…
"We have to leave," he said, "Now."
Skittles measured an extremely high heartbeat from him, and I could tell just from the sound of his breathing that he was anxious.
"What's happened?"
He glanced back at the door, then Skittles, and finally back to me. "I'll explain it all later. But please-"
His eyes widened as he looked over my chair to the windows beyond. Shadows were playing among the shutters-something large obstructing the sunlight. The entire apartment was soundproofed, but there was the telltale whine of jets could be heard.
I triggered the windows to drop their shields. The kevmesh armor shot downward from its recessed compartment above the windows, fast, but not fast enough.
Guns opened fire, stitching bullets across the apartment. The windows shattered, spraying glass over the confined space. The whine of the jet engines became suddenly and overwhelmingly loud. Bullets stitched a trail across the wall, in a heartbeat eating up the distance from the yellow acacia in the corner to Skittles' chair.
I had already begun rolling to the floor, but before I could even touch the carpet I felt something burn along my upper thigh and then my backside. Then something hotter than I had ever felt in my life bored deep into my lower torso. As the shields finally slammed into place, I looked down to find blood welling from a hole in my gut, not the bright red one saw against their skin after a small cut, but blood of the dark and deep and deadly variety. I knew just from looking at it that I would soon slip into shock, but that knowledge seemed to slow time down, seemed to sharpen my senses, not deaden them.
Koorong was on the floor, looking at me with wide eyes and a worried face as bullets tore viciously into the shielding. Skittles was barking and running around in a circle. She nipped at Koorong's arm until I found the presence of mind to call her away.
The guns ceased firing, bringing a relative silence, but the change in volume felt deadly because it made me think that the only reason they had stopped was that something more powerful was on its way. Koorong must have sensed this as well, because instead of tending to my wound he moved behind me and picked me up under the armpits and dragged me toward the front door.
We made it halfway before an explosion tore through the shielding. The armor did not completely give way, but it was close. Fire rolled across the apartment, the force of the blast threw us backward.
Koorong was up again in a moment, dragging me, though not nearly as quickly as he had moments ago. Still, we made it out into the corridor as the second blast came in. Skittles followed us, flames and smoke licking at her heels. The door slammed shut with an almighty boom and bowed outward, but it held. It'd better hold, I thought in a moment of insensate humor, or I'd be asking for my money back.
The heat of the wound in my side had ebbed, replaced by a cold, tingling sensation in my fingers and cheeks and nose. When we made it to the lift, Koorong pressed the button marked 150 instead of the one that would take us to the lobby.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
Ignoring my question, he pulled up his pant leg. Underneath was a simsilk leg sheath with a myriad of small pockets. From one of these he took a yellow wad of sticks and mud, which he squeezed tightly in one hand. The thing cracked and popped like miniature fireworks. He pulled my shirt up and placed the balled up wad onto the wound, and like a spider unfolding its legs, the thing expanded until it covered the wound completely.
Skittles, surprisingly, only watched.
The wound began to burn white, blazing hot. I stifled a scream as he repeated the process on the other side, where the bullet had exited-or was that where it had entered?
I passed out momentarily.
When I woke, he was dragging me up the stairs that led to the roof's access door. Normally it would be secured, but for some reason it opened for him.
Skittles launched herself past him.
"Come back, girl." My voice was weak, and Skittles paid me no mind.
Outside, it was dusk. The sun seemed to have broken into a galaxy of lights that lay golden against the landscape of the sprawl.
"Where are we going?" I asked again, unable to form a more coherent thought.
Koorong pulled me to the edge of the building, mumbling words under his breath as the immensity of the sprawl came into full display beneath us. I grew dizzy.
The whine of the jets intensified. They knew we'd escaped to the top and were coming after us. Skittles was barking so fiercely I thought she might damage her voice box. Koorong pulled me up to the lip of the building as the jet's roar increased sharply.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw, cresting the edge of the building, a four-engine tilt-wing with a cluster of serious looking weapons fixed to the belly. Within the partially mirrored surface of the cockpit's windshield were two pilots, one sitting higher than the other.
Then they were lost from view, for Koorong had taken a step forward, pulling me with him. We fell, slowly it seemed to me. I looked up and saw Skittles, looking down, barking madly, the transparent blue concrete at the edge of the building ablating from a hail of bullets.
"Skittles!"
No sooner had I said her name than she was whisked off the building and into the air. She followed us down as the wind began to roar. In my terror I thought the sound was due to the speed of our descent, but it soon became clear that the airstream was rushing upward so quickly that it was slowing us down. Then it was carrying us.
We began slipping sideways, at a slightly downward angle, through the byways of the sprawl, passing building after building as the people inside them stopped and stared. We went two klicks in less than a minute, Skittles floating close behind us, silent for once.
We came down near a small park. The pain in my abdomen returned as we fell to the ground. Koorong lay next to me, panting heavily in between hard coughs. Despite the wind, he was sweating profusely. Skittles hobbled over-she'd picked up a severe limp, though whether it was from a stray bullet or the landing I didn't know-and began licking his forehead until he defended himself.
And then I passed out for good. • • •
I awoke in a Spartan room with strips of lights running along the ceiling. I was lying on a gurney. Every part of me ached-the bullet wounds especially, but they were less painful than I would have guessed. I tried to access the net, but failed. Already my skin was beginning to crawl at the realization that I could not feel the Resonance. I tried to reassure myself, reasoning that we were in an insulated bunker of some kind, but this did nothing to calm my growing sense of anxiety.
I turned my head and saw a cage in the corner of the room. Skittles was inside, but for some reason I couldn't sense her through my normal connections.
"Skittles?" I said, hoping she would wake.
She didn't move, and my heart sank.
"Skittles, dear?"
Then she did move, though it was slowly, as if she'd been sorely wounded. As she stared through the wires of the cage, a great sense of relief washed over me.
"There, there, girl-"
I stopped as the sound of an opening door echoed dimly into the room. The click of footsteps came softly at first, growing louder. I turned my head, that simple motion painful. Against the far wall was a hallway that took a shallow angle up and into the darkness. Koorong stepped into the light with an unreadable expression on his face. I wished Skittles' sensors were working. I felt naked without them.
"How long has it been?" I asked.
"Nearly a day, but the sedatives I gave you should have kept you under for at least another twelve hours."
"Where are we?"
He paused. "We're safe."
"That's not what I asked."
He pursed his lips, and the chocolate skin over his eyebrows furrowed. "For now that's the best I can offer."
"Then tell me this, or I'm getting up and hobbling out of here. How did Cylestra know I was investigating them? I hadn't so much as touched the tunnel or the packet you sent me. I was only searching for information about them, about you, passively."
He glanced toward Skittles. I followed suit, my eyes thinning, an uncomfortable feeling forming in my gut. "What did you do to my dog?"
"She'll be fine."
"Tell me!"
"It's a virus, low level, innocuous. It gathers information and transmits it to my wife, in the Matrix."
I thought back to the kafe, when Skittles had bit him. He had done that on purpose, and I'd completely missed it. "Why?" I asked. "Why monitor me?"
"It's well known what you can do."
I shook my head. "I gather data, for the right people, for the right price. How's that going to get your daughter back?"
His face screwed up in anger. "I'm not trying to get her back, I'm trying to make them pay!"
"What's that got to do with me?"
"Allora needs to know how you do the things you do."
"There are dozens of technomancers around Sydney."
"You're more than a simple technomancer, and you know it."
"You think she can learn what I know in a few hours?"
"No." Koorong began pacing across the cold concrete floor. "We've been studying you for months. We learned much by simply watching, and even more during the hours Skittles was feeding her data. She only needs the last few pieces of the puzzle."
"What can she possibly hope to do with it? I read data."
"It is by knowing how data is read that data can be planted." His face grew angrier as he talked. "Allora will take Cylestra down, bit by bit, brick by brick, until there's nothing left."
"And the Tamanous list?" I asked, thinking of Liam. "Does it even exist?"
"It might." He seemed to deflate as he spoke. "I don't know."
I tried to sit up, but the bullet wound flared like a red-hot iron. It was only pain, though. I sat up, grunting through gritted teeth as stars danced before my eyes. I nearly fell back, but managed to prop myself up, breathing heavily, sweat tickling my brow and armpits.
"Please, lie down. It's not safe to move yet."
"I'm leaving, and I'm taking Skittles with me." Despite those words, I didn't move. I couldn't. I knew I would simply fall if I made it to the concrete floor; I certainly wouldn't make it to Skittles' cage. Maybe in a few minutes, I told myself.
"Even if you could leave-which you can't, not like this-I need you. This isn't over."
"I'm not helping you anymore."
His expression hardened. "My wife is in danger because of you, and you're going to help get her out of it."
"I placed her in danger? Who fed that poor excuse for a Trojan to my dog? Who thought transmitting from my apartment directly to Cylestra's intranet was a good idea?"
"You had me followed. Two of Cylestra's sister corps have people inside SkySec. They must have run a search after sensing the incoming trace."
"How does that place Allora in danger?"
"Because I went to see her! I'm fortunate I masked myself halfway there, but they'll find her soon. We have to go to her. You have to show Allora what you do, so she understands completely."
I took shallow breaths to stave off the dizziness as rage boiled within me. I was angry not because Koorong had fooled me-I'd been fooled before and I'd be fooled again-it was because I'd fallen for such simple bait. I had jumped at the chance to avenge Liam's death too quickly. You never get what you pay for when the price is too cheap."
As I gripped the edge of the gurney, my knuckles aching, I found myself thinking less about Liam and more about Allora. She was a woman who had lost her child. Liam and I had never had children, but I was sure that if I had, and I'd lost her to a corp, I'd bloody well be trying to do something about it. And it wasn't just about Sindara. It was bigger than that. Cylestra was multinational. How many others had found a similar fate to Sindala? Dozens? Hundreds?
Koorong had an expectant look on his face. He knew-or had a good idea-that I would agree to help, even after his duplicity. Was I really that transparent?
I supposed I was. "Where is Allora?" I asked.
"Not far."
I watched as Koorong melded into the surface of the graffiti-covered wall behind him. He was still there, just camouflaged, but the effect was so successful that standing only a meter away I could hardly detect his outline. He claimed it would work for both of us, and as long as he was able to concentrate, it would be enough to get us inside Blaxland Heights, a massive tenement project on Sydney's southwest side, without being seen by cameras. Indeed, when I looked down I couldn't see my own hands, even when while wiggling them.
Ready? he asked subvocally.
I checked the Blax's meager security system again. Allora had created several back doors, and Koorong had given me the keys. The path we'd be taking was populated, but by nothing that would cause any alarm.
Ready, I said.
We padded across the street toward a courtyard that sat below the fifty-story complex. I could still feel the bullet wounds, but barely. The yellow wads had taken a while to kick into full gear, but they had healed my injuries to the point that the skin had closed over with bright pink scar tissue.
Skittles-also covered by Koorong's spell-followed close behind us. I'd disabled her barking except for the direst of emergencies. I had nearly left her in Koorong's underground safe house, but had found that I couldn't. She'd been my most steadfast friend for the last twelve years, and it felt too strange going without her. I would actually think about her more if she wasn't with me, which would only lead to mistakes.
We wove through a steady stream of traffic until finally passing through the entrance. What met us was a gallery that was probably meant to be impressive, but its grandeur was dimmed by the half-filled stores that lined each side and the smells of disinfectant that could not quite mask the scent of decay. As we walked, avoiding the traffic of Blax's mishmash crowds, the sights and sounds of in-your-face AR marketing clashed with what was once a stark and understated interior.
We headed in nearly two klicks-taking turn after turn and escalator after escalator up through the alternating clusters of strip malls and domicile-hives-until finally reaching a massive atrium whose dirt-caked windows ten stories above served only to make things gloomier. We had gone halfway through the atrium, skirting a group of chipheads sitting in a circle on the synthsteel floor, when an alarm from Blax's northern end flared within my AR display. I had tweaked Blax's system to trigger a low-level alarm for anything or anyone that seemed out of the ordinary, and further filtered it to trip a higher-level alarm for corporate-type squads, and finally a third if Cylestra or any of her sister corps were sensed. This alarm was the highest priority.
They're here. No sooner had I subvocalized the words than my feed to Blax's security system was cut off.
My heartbeat quickened. Of the seven hired samurai we had spaced around the complex, I triggered four to go after the pair of trolls and half-dozen men that had entered Blax's northern end. The others I kept in reserve in case Cylestra had sent in more than one team.
We continued to the edge of the atrium and took the lift to the thirty-seventh floor, our camouflage finally fading away on the ride up. When we exited, Skittles began barking fiercely. Before I could shush her, the rattle of gunfire broke out somewhere far below. We turned a corner and rushed down a dimly lit hall to an apartment as screams and a small explosion shook the air.
Skittles, sticking her head out between two of the nicked bars of the atrium railing, picked up three of our samurai beating a quick retreat into the open space below.
Things had gotten worse much faster than I'd anticipated. I summoned the remaining samurai to assist, hoping they could catch Cylestra's men off guard-though with the amount of preparation the enemy had already shown, I knew that hope to be slim.
We ducked inside the apartment, and Koorong immediately tapped a sequence on a holopad inside the door. The space was very cramped, but it otherwise looked like it belonged somewhere far, far away from the sprawl. The walls were a rich, earthy gold, and the room had been decorated with Aboriginal masks and pottery and ornate, dried flower wreaths. And it smelled… like nature. It was jarringly attractive after the stark, gray labyrinth of Blaxland Heights.
We rushed down a hallway to a bedroom, and there, lying on a gurney not unlike the one I had found myself on only hours before, was Allora. I knew that she was two years younger than Koorong, but she looked at least a decade older. Her cheeks were sunken, and her skin was a sickly shade of brown. Her eyes rested deep in their sockets, and though the pictures I had found of her on the net had shown a healthy young woman, this Allora was grossly thin.
Hurry, Koorong said as he pulled a heavy, rolling tripod from the closet. Mounted upon the tripod was a heavy machine gun. He locked the wheels and lowered the gun until it was horizontal, and then he nodded toward Allora meaningfully, almost angrily.
I searched for her PAN, but found nothing. I scanned her form and found a wired connection leading to an old, reliable Renraku hub.
She's hardwired?
Koorong looked at me, confused for a moment, but then a look of horror and understanding came over him.
I'll have to go through Blax's WAN.
His eyes widened, and his gaze darted between me and Allora several times. You said it yourself, they have control over it now.
I sat down in a synth-leather chair with permanent depressions in the cushions. Can't be helped.
Another explosion sounded, much closer than I would have thought.
"Go!" Koorong said out loud as he trained the barrel of the machine gun on the door.
I leaned back and connected to the WAN.
I was immediately assaulted by a prehensile arm emanating from a massive, floating piece of IC. The thing was like a god of the seas from eons ago, black with hundreds of tendrils wavering in an unseen wind, all of them ready to strike. It lashed out again and again, but I had learned more than a few tricks in my time and wouldn't be caught so easily.
I sent out several paladin sprites in the next few milliseconds, and while the IC was deciding which of those to attack, I tethered several of its arms to the one of the paladins, forcing it into a regressive loop that would take precious seconds to unravel.
At the same time, I activated the encrypted tunnel to Allora. Immediately, and for the first time, I could feel her. She was indeed hidden deep within the maze of Cylestra's net, and she was fighting to remain hidden, for it was clear that Cylestra was now digging recklessly in order to find her.
I probed, hoping to create a stronger connection with Allora, but every time I did Cylestra's IC whipped its arms toward me. Only by feinting and launching more paladins was I able to keep them from striking home.
But then something changed. An alarm had been raised, and all proximal firewalls flared red, limiting traffic to secure channels only. I'd anticipated that, but the IC had activated an enhanced sniffer subroutine. The IC-even with the sniffer-wasn't good enough to catch me if I was careful, but it was more than adequate to make sure I remained separated from Allora.
I was growing desperate. The squad Cylestra had sent would reach the door any moment, and if I reached out to Allora in any significant way, the sniffer would find us both. I tried again and again, using all the complex forms I had learned over the years, but none of it was working.
At the back of my mind, I sensed an alarm from Skittles. The squad had broken through the door. I released the inhibitors that prevented her from launching tranq darts without my approval, hoping it would help Koorong, if only to a small degree. When I did so, I felt the telltale remains of Koorong's virus.
And that's when it struck me. The solution was crystal clear. The only thing I wasn't sure of was whether I had the time to do it.
Using Koorong's virus-a truly masterful piece of ware-as a model, I altered the sprites I'd used earlier. It was rushed, and I knew there were holes, but I only needed several good seconds. After adding some tracerouting, I released the paladins, moving as close to Cylestra as I dared. I could tell they'd found Allora, but had not yet been able to purge her from their systems. I commanded the paladins to ping loudly, forcing the IC to split its attention.
The dark and deadly arms turned and attacked. I nearly got caught in the initial onslaught, but was able to slip away as they fell upon the duplicates. Immediately I spread my awareness among the sprawl, pulling together the previous data I had earmarked regarding Sindara. I had not gone further at the time, thinking the other patients irrelevant, but I found more and more participants, building a case of circumstantial data that, when viewed as a whole, would paint a very uncomfortable picture of Cylestra's medical practices.
As I continued, I felt the data stream from me, through the paladins, and all the way to Allora. She was feeling everything I was.
I hoped it was enough. It would have to be, because the IC-even though it had nearly succumbed to Koorong's virus-had finally traced the signals back to me. It began boring through my defenses. The pain was worse than the bullet wound, for I felt it everywhere. It was nearly impossible to think, but I couldn't leave. Not yet.
I sent the information to all of the district attorneys that were responsible for the patients in Cylestra's kidney trials, and several more copies to the most independent news outlets I knew.
And then I dropped out.
I woke to the sound of rapid, heavy gunfire.
In front of me, a chromed up troll lay unconscious in the hallway, two darts sticking out of his neck, another from his right cheek.
Next to me, the rotating barrel of the machine gun stopped as the bullets ran out. Koorong glanced over at me, realizing I was back. "Is it done?" he asked while feeding another belt of bullets into the gun.
"I-"
My words were cut off as a stream of bullets tore into the room. Koorong's shoulder blossomed red, and he howled in pain. The gypsum board above me crumbled as I dove to the floor. The bullets stopped a moment later, and in the following silence I heard a series of sharp puffs as Skittles' dart gun fired.
The short burst of gunfire that followed ended with a horrible, high-pitched yelp. Moments later, there came the sound of a body falling heavily to the floor.
Koorong was silent. Unconscious. I searched for Skittles' signal, but the only response I received was a simple readout showing that nearly all of her systems had been destroyed but that the one of last resort-the thermite grenade tucked into her chest cavity-was active and waiting for the signal to detonate.
Two more sets of footsteps approached the entrance. They stepped into the forward room a moment later, their boots scraping noisily over the detritus of battle. There was a moment of silence: the men taking caution after so many had unexpectedly died.
The grenade's active status blinked in my readout, but I didn't think I could do it-didn't know if I could kill her, even to save myself-but the moment I saw the shadow of the first of them stepping into the short hallway leading to the bedroom, a fear so expansive welled up in my chest that I gladly grabbed for the chance Skittles was offering me.
I crab-walked into the corner, curled up into a ball, and gave Skittles the affirmative.
The grenade detonated a split-second later.
Even with my eyes shut tight, everything went white. The explosion was deafening. The shockwave pounded every part of me at once. Debris blew into the room and rained down for long moments, and I swear I felt the section of the building we were in sway back and forth.
As the sound of pattering debris filled the room, I slowly got to my feet and brushed away the powdery white bits of wall that had fallen over me. I coughed as I waded through the cloud, looking for Koorong.
I found him lying in the closet, dead, three bullets-red on white-stitched across his chest. I turned away immediately, unable to look upon him like that.
I turned to the gurney. Allora was still there, but when I touched her neck to find a pulse, I found nothing. I stared at her for long moments, feeling like a sister-in cause, if not in blood. Sadness welled up inside me and begged to be let out, but it was not something I could allow to happen. Not now. Not here.
I left the apartment quickly and wandered in a semi-random path toward the nearest exit from The Blax. I found no resistance. I hitched a ride on an old-style water ferry and took it to the north side of Sydney. Then I paid for a coffin hotel with anonymous cred. Several hours of sheer terror followed where I was sure I would be found and shot dead where I lay, but eventually it became clear that I wouldn't be followed. Not today, at least.
And finally, hiding in that small, darkened space, I allowed myself to cry.
I didn't dare get a new SIN in Australia, and I didn't dare keep myself anywhere near Cylestra's sphere of influence, so I headed for Tokyo. I set up shop and began taking very simple jobs-data scrubbing and the like-and then one day I was sitting in a seedy bar drinking a truly horrible cup of kaf when a Japanese man in a black suit walked in and headed directly for my table. The look on his face as he wove through the tables was one of serious intent.
Seven months had passed since the devastation in Blaxland, but I knew immediately he was somehow connected to it. I hadn't had the heart to get another dog after Skittles. I had, however, picked up a gun. I reached into my purse, but before I could wrap my shaking fingers around the grip, the man slipped one hand inside his suit coat and pulled out a chip the size of a thumbnail. He set it carefully onto my table, then turned and left.
I grabbed the chip and held it tight in my fist. Only after the attention of the others patrons had returned to other things did I slip the chip into a reader inside my purse.
It contained, I found, a SIN. Fiona Douglass. Born within six months of me in Scotland. Her parents had moved to Brisbane when she was twelve, and after graduating early with a degree in datalytics, she'd moved around Australia-not surprisingly to many of the places I had been, both before and after Liam. I could tell already that it was a consummate job; Fiona Douglass had no doubt died recently, but I had few doubts that it would be difficult to tell that without speaking directly to people who'd known her.
I was now Fiona Douglass.
Before I knew it, tears were welling in my eyes. I sniffed and wiped them away, sipping the bitter kaf to camouflage the outward signs of my utmost joy.
Allora had made it. She hadn't died in that apartment in Blaxland, she'd jacked in. Permanently. A ghost in the machine.
I tapped into the net and began sifting-in an extremely passive manner-the history of Cylestra over the past few months. It was something I had avoided since leaving Australia, but with the arrival of this news it felt sufficiently safe to have a look. What I found was a series of events-communication leaks, misplaced orders, a downtick in sales-that made it clear that Cylestra was on a slow and steady decline toward a death of its own. Corps the size of Cylestra could not truly die; if it performed poorly for too long, it would be swallowed, in whole or in part, by another corp, but when that happened, Allora would be there. She would be absorbed as part of the merger, and she would hound the new corp until the biotech wing was deemed too inefficient to justify its continued existence. She would eventually, inevitably, exact her revenge.
After sitting back in my uncomfortable seat and savoring these realizations, I got up and left the bar.
It was time to get a real cup of kaf.
And then it was time to find a dog.