As the door opened, Dec saw the second man standing in the background, weapon aimed directly at the door. Armed men. Armor. The stakes just went up. Dec thought back to the white van in the parking lot. This was a snatch and grab crew. Their weapons might not even have bullets. At least, not their big guns. Too much noise for a job like this.
“I dunno, like, 50 credits for the pizza, and then, like, uhmmm, maybe 10 credits for the tip, or like, more if you’re feeling generous,” Dec said. “Hang on,” replied the gruff man, before closing the door and fishing through his pockets for the credits. He came up short, and turned to the other two, showing 40 credits in his outstretched hand for them to chip in. The second man made up the difference, and gruff returned to the door. He unchained the lock, and opened the door further.
As he extended his left hand with the credits, he saw Dec standing there, with no pizza. “What the hell? Who the fuck are you, and why are you soaking wet?”, gruff said. Dec replied, “a neighbor, coming to see what all the noise was. I live downstairs.” “Unlikely,” the gruff man said, “get your ass in here. Hands up, slick.”
Dec obeyed, and placed both hands behind his head as he slowly stepped through the doorway. Three men, all armored, looked to be level 3 soft armor. His sidearm wouldn’t have helped anyway, just pissed them off. Sheep was cuffed and hooded, and Res was laying on the floor with a pretty nasty bruise on one cheek and a bleeding nose. He counted in his head, estimating the time before backup showed up, and he planned to be alive after the cavalry arrived. The gruff man motioned to the second man. “Check him out,” he said, as the second man approached him for a pat down. “Easy big fella,” he said, and after patting him down, finding nothing, he said, “now show me your hands.”
Dec set his jaw, and lowered his hands to his sides, both fists clenched tightly. “I don’t like guns, guys. Especially if they’re pointed at me; really makes me nervous.”, Dec said. “Well, that’s too bad, princess. You came to the wrong place at the wrong time. You’d probably be smart to just, I dunno, turn around and leave. Or, you can stay here and add to the body count. Don’t care either way,” gruff said, “your move.”
“I have a better idea,” Dec replied, “how about you guys put down your guns, and I’ll beat all three of you with my bare hands? Or, I can keep stalling, and more friends will show up, then it’ll be a real party.” Jackson chuckled. A three on one fight? No problem. The second man looked at the gruff man for the next step. It was dawning on the gruff man that this guy wasn’t bluffing. He recognized one of the tattoos, snaking its way up his arm, and he knew only the most elite soldiers were allowed to get that design. Still, they had the advantage. “What could one unarmed vet do against three men?”, he thought, “these guys are usually drunk or pilled up to their eyeballs.”
Gruff motioned to the second man to lay down his weapon, as he grinned and got into a fighting stance. Jackson sat his gun on the couch and looked back at gruff. “One more thing,” gruff said to Dec, “show me your palms.”
Dec extended his left fist, palm up, and opened his hand. Nothing. As Dec extended his right fist, palm down, he squeezed. Hard. A brief, electrostatic crackle filled the air around him as three rare-earth magnets, tucked between his fingers, facing gruff, launched at supersonic speed. Before he could even blink, gruff’s body armor had been pierced on both sides by the magnets, leaving three bleeding vertical slits behind. It was a critical wound, and he knew it. “Kill him,” he coughed, as he clutched at his chest and fell to the floor. Dec dove to the right, spit more magnets into his right hand as he fell, and launched a second barrage at Jackson, blasting him in the right shoulder as Jackson was reaching for the gun on the couch, spinning him around violently. Outside the window, somewhere close, an Archer 1500 small drone platform fired its arrow. Glass from the open window shattered as instantly, the second man caught a 2-inch square railgun slug to the chest which punched straight through his back and chest, dropping him like a bag of potatoes. Dec got up and rushed Jackson, tackling him and knocking him out as he was driven into the wall. Res, dazed from the hit to the face, raised her head a little and said “Dec?”, before falling unconscious.
Dec breathed a sigh of relief. They would have killed her.
As Dec approached the dilapidated building, he was honestly surprised that anyone lived there. All those windows, but not many lights on inside. It was halfway abandoned, or looked that way. He slowed his pace to a jog, briefly examining the parking lot for anything suspicious. Nobody was out milling around in this weather, and the most suspicious vehicle he saw was a windowless, white van. It looked new. He checked his comms again and the single-eyed pyramid icon had a number floating above it. 37. The estimated time for backup was 37 more seconds. He couldn’t wait.
He kicked open the lobby doors, and one fell off its hinges and crashed to the floor as he kept moving. “So much for stealth, but this storm is good cover,” Dec thought, checking the coordinates on the comms again to see if anything had changed. He slapped the elevator button, and to his surprise, the doors snapped open. Nobody was inside the waiting car as he charged in and literally punched the number 5. The doors closed just as quickly as they had opened, with a snap, and he was heading up, fast.
The gruff man retrieved two more items from the bag, then turned to Sheep first. “Say ahh,” he said, before shoving a gag into Sheep’s mouth, securing it with duct tape, and pulling the fabric bag over his head. “Comfy? Good.” Next, he approached Res. “Your turn, darlin’,” he said, but Res, stinging from the backhand, spat in his eye instead. “Fuck you. FUCK YOU!”, she yelled at the gruff man, who was grimacing and wiping the spit from his eye. “Jackson, you got any hard feelings left about this one?”, he said, as he turned to face Jackson. Res felt her heart was going to explode now, it was all fight and no flight, and she had no business provoking them further. She just wanted to be out of this whole mess, yet her body seemed to have a mind of its own. “HELP MEEEE!”, she screamed, before Jackson flipped his rifle around and smashed her in the face with the butt stock. She felt her knees buckle from the impact and collapsed to the floor. This was it.
As Dec exited the elevator, he heard a scream, then a thump. “Goddamn it, am I too late?”, he thought, as he walked quickly but quietly to the source of the sound. Glancing at the comms, he saw a number 23 over the triangle icon. He would have to act alone, and he would have to stall. As he approached the door, the comms flashed, indicating this was the place. He knocked gently. No response. He knocked a little harder, and the men inside all pivoted to face the door. They looked at each other briefly, silently deciding who would answer, before the gruff man called out, “Who’s there?”. Dec replied flatly, “pizza”. Gruff slowly approached the door, which had no peep hole, and put an ear to the door, before saying, “You got the wrong place. We didn’t order pizza.” Jackson and the second man trained their guns on the door, anticipating the next move. “Uhhm, the box says 5223 Skyline Drive, unit 512? I’m pretty sure this is yours,” Dec said, “because it’s…like…the only address like this.”
The gruff man was starting to get annoyed. If it was a pizza man, he wasn’t going away. At least, not without a tip. He removed his ballistic mask, laid his weapon behind the door, and unlocked the door, except for a little, weak safety chain. He turned to the others, making a shhh motion with one finger over his lips. He cracked the door open a few inches, the length of the chain, and looked through the gap. “Listen, buddy, I’m telling ya, we didn’t order a pizza. What do you want, money? If it’ll make you go away, I’ll give you a few credits. What’s the total?”, he said.
There was plenty of tension in the air, and Sheep had never been so nervous in his life. They were buying the ruse, but for how long? He had to double-down. “I’ll consider disarming it when I can relax again, and I can’t relax with you goons here. Who the hell are you, and what do you want?”, barked Sheepdog. The gruff man spoke up again; he must have been the leader. “Hey, hey… no reason to be nervous here. We’re all disarmed. A client just needed some answers, and it was suggested that you may not want to give those answers so easily to strangers. We have our own questions. Let’s be civilized here. No. Rash. Moves.”.
They were buying the act. Especially the team lead. His voice had the crust of war and Sheep imagined that he had actually seen explosions like the one he was threatening, and didn’t want to repeat that, ever. He replied, “Vague lies. I want a name.” “Let’s just call him, T-Rex. That’s all we know. You see, you don’t exactly hire a team like this with a listed name. The order goes in, the target is loaded, credits transfer, we show up,” said the gruff man, in a matter-of-fact way. “This ain’t personal, man.”
“You still haven’t told me why you’re here,” Sheep said, “and I’m getting tired of holding this button down.” A few drops of sweat were forming on his brow, and his hand was getting visibly fatigued, shaking a little while he held the joystick button. The gruff man replied again. “Listen, we’re tired of being here too. We were paid to get some info about some kind of video footage. They said you saw something that you weren’t supposed to see. I guess the guy hiding in that footage didn’t appreciate you snooping around. We weren’t gonna hurt you. Not much. Just enough to extract that information, and discourage you from snooping around.”
Res was still balled up behind the couch, desperately thinking of a way out of this. She could take out one, maybe two of these guys, but only if they were off-guard and slower than her. They had the advantage of seeing the room; she could only imagine who was where; there wasn’t even a mirror she could look at from her location. Sheep couldn’t keep this up all night. The longer this went on, the less they would believe him, even though right now, he had them singing like birds.
Dec believed in himself. He never doubted for a second that he could outrun his own estimate. The device estimated he was 60 seconds from the target, and closing fast. Definitely a setback, but not enough time to think about what he was running into. The target looked like a multi-residential unit, and the coordinates suggested she was on the 5th floor. Elevator or stairs? It was a coin-toss, he would decide on arrival. He was also mostly disarmed, which might be a problem, although how big of a problem would be determined on site. As he chugged along, he only seemed to run faster; he felt exhilarated going all out, despite getting soaked from the relentless downpour. Memories of running towards danger during the war mingled in his head. He was born for situations like this; charging headlong into danger, not knowing the odds. Hang in there, Res. I’m coming.
The sweating wasn’t isolated to Sheep’s brow. His palms and everything else were getting involved. Nervous response, nothing he could do to stop it. The gruff man said, “I think we’ve played fair here. You know who sent us and what we want. How about you relax a little. We can all relax now. Nobody has to die.” As the word DIE hung in the air, suddenly, Sheep lost his grip on the joystick. It plummeted to the floor, along with the rest of the cord attached to it, including the end that plugged in to the Atari. Two of the men immediately squatted and covered their ears, bracing for the massive explosion, convinced that the dead man’s switch was real. The gruff man didn’t move an inch. “I fuckin knew it. You were bluffing the whole time. Boys, arm up!”, he yelled, and you could hear the vengeance in his voice. However this was going to go, things had escalated now. The other two men grabbed their guns by the door and drew a bead on Sheep. “Jackson, check the other rooms,” he ordered, and Jackson began searching the rest of the place. Sheep looked defeated and threw both hands in the air as he was ordered to his knees.
The gruff man stepped around behind him and forcefully grabbed one arm before zipping half of a plastic cuff around his wrist, yanking his other arm down to apply the second. “Now we’re gonna find out how much you know, after we take a little trip together,” he said. Jackson announced the other rooms were clear, but upon returning to the living room, he spotted Res crouched behind the couch. “Well ain’t that sweet, he’s got company. Stand up and identify yourself,” Jackson commanded her. More out of panic than anything else, Res howled, drew her firearm and got one shot off on Jackson as she stood up. It hit him square in the chest, and Jackson let out a quiet oof as the bullet hit his armor, flattened out, and fell to the floor. “She’s a spicy one,” said the second man, “now drop your little toy there, lady.”
Res did as he said, there was no point in resisting any further. She was lucky to be alive at that point, and unlike Sheep, she didn’t plan to gamble anymore. Her comms buzzed again, pointlessly. It was a hopeless situation for her and Sheep. The second man approached her and did a quick pat down, making sure she didn’t have any more surprises for them. Jackson grunted, “I think you might have left a bruise. Here, let’s trade.” He backhanded her across the cheek, the reinforced Kevlar knuckles of his gloves making contact with her cheekbone. She winced in pain. The gruff man strolled over to Res with another set of plastic cuffs. “You know the drill. Let’s go easy.” Res relented and slowly placed her wrists together behind her back. It was over. She and Sheep were leaving with these guys whether they liked it or not. The gruff man retrieved his gun and two head covers from his duffle bag. He was taking them away hostage-style. Jackson and the second man had their weapons aimed at Sheep and Res.
Dec scoured the ceiling with his gaze while he found just the right words. “Well you see,” he bellowed over the next song, “I’m kind of on the clock. Weird hours.” He shifted in his seat, pulling a piece of paper out of his back pocket. It was another origami piece, this time a paper balloon that was collapsed. “Ever see one of these?”, he asked. “I think so. You’re supposed to pull on these corners then blow in the hole to pop it open, and look inside, right?” “You got it. Try it.” Res studied it briefly, lifted it up by the “wings”, and puffed into the exposed hole on the end, inflating the balloon. She peered inside, where a little handwritten note said “Is it private here?”. Res slowly sat the balloon down, stared at Dec, and nodded yes. “Good,” Dec said, “because I have another message to deliver. I don’t know who this is for, but you guys gotta stop chasing this ghost. It sounds dangerous. They’re getting more than concerned. Don’t get me wrong, they didn’t exactly twist my arm to get me to deliver the message, and I hate that it has to be like this, but…” Before Dec could finish his sentence, Res practically jumped across the table and laid a passionate kiss on him, feeling some stubble grind into her tender skin. The contrast just made her more excited. “Let’s finish this lecture later,” she said as she started pulling his shirt over his head. Dec was stunned but he put up no resistance; business and pleasure, why not? Res quickly reached behind herself and instantly released her bra before removing her own shirt, pressing her skin against his with another kiss. She felt his heart pounding. It was powerful, nearly audible. Without losing the embrace, Dec stood up and carried her to the bedroom, quickly noticing a new toothbrush still in the packaging at the foot of the bed.
After some time, lying flat on his back covered in sweat and Res’ lipstick, with Res draping herself over his massive frame, left leg overlapping his own, he took a really good look at her. Skin, impossibly soft and young to the touch. If he hadn’t read her file, he might have easily mistaken her for a 17-year-old, and this would never have gone this far. Her eyes were a light brown, hazel color, even here in the dimly lit bedroom, they looked like there was an inner light making them glow. He reached over with his Terminator arm and stroked the shaved side of her head which felt freshly shaven. Her gaze darted around his face as he touched her gently, apparently awaiting some more encouraging words. He managed to pet the side of her head that wasn’t shaved and was surprised at how soft her hair was. “Most men aren’t this touchy; I’m surprised you’re still awake with me. This whole touching business is usually me after the guy falls asleep,” Res cooed, while she absorbed every brutal detail of his scars and his iron-jawed visage. Contrast. Suddenly she was transported back in time, mentally, to the story about how her parents met. Was this what mom experienced, the first time? This infatuation, this weird appreciation for the exotic?
Dec announced that he was overdue for a bathroom break and ducked into the bathroom to relieve himself. His scent was already soaked into the pillow and sheets where he was laying, and Res didn’t miss an opportunity to deeply inhale what he had left behind. There were no hints of colognes, or aftershave, or anything of that nature. It was just…his sweat, with a hint of some kind of soap. As Dec returned to the bed, he reached for the toothbrush. “Not so fast, soldier,” Res teased. She wasn’t done, and led him by the hand to the shower. Res traced the scar around his arm with a single finger. She couldn’t comprehend what was under the skin.
The next morning, Res was still asleep as Dec performed his sit up straight and get out of bed routine. He headed to the kitchen and started brewing some coffee with the percolator, after fishing around in the cabinets for mugs and coffee beans. He really didn’t want to reinforce the message with Res, but he had to. That was the whole point of coming over, and this was no time to get attached. But before he could even come up with a nicer way of breaking it to Res, he heard her from the bedroom. “If you’re making coffee, I want some,” she said, “doesn’t need to be fancy, I’ll drink it black.” Of course you will. That’s the way Dec was making it. He didn’t have the luxury of sugar or milk during wartime, so he learned to like it black. Tasted better anyway, as long as the beans were fresh.
Res arrived in the kitchen looking like a big kid, with Dec’s oversized shirt practically swallowing her whole. This was the awkward time, the morning after, and she sensed an uneasiness hanging in the air. What was last night? Just two desperate loners looking for a connection, or something better? She had to tread lightly. Decided to keep it light. “Good, you found everything”, she said, smiling approvingly, as she admired the fresh cup, still steaming. “Yep. I did. But at my place, everything is about 3 feet higher. You’d be crawling up the cabinets if the roles were reversed. Nearly threw out my back bending down for this stuff,” Dec joked, and Res grinned as she blew the steam away for her first sip. “Listen, Res, about last night…”, said Dec, “I don’t want it to be weird. We’re two adults, and here we are sharing some coffee. But that wasn’t my whole intent of coming over. I know how this sounds, but allow me to finish.” Res nodded and sipped the hot coffee, not sure where this was going.
Dec paused as he took a drink, then continued. “I’ll say this one last time, and be done with it. You remember before, the warning about ghosts? Well, there is a lot of interest, and it involves you, Sheepdog, and hell, maybe even Beat. Too many eyes watching for something that shouldn’t exist. Looking too closely. You gotta stop looking. If you find something, well, I don’t know what the next step is, but it’s bad, maybe even deadly. Tell your buddy Sheepdog too. Maybe even word for word. Don’t get me wrong, I like you Res, and that’s half the reason I’m saying this in person.”
Res was staring at him, wide-eyed now, soaking it all in. What could happen if they did find something? What if they already found it but just didn’t know what they had seen? She could tell, Dec was dead serious. This was their last warning. Whatever was going on, she felt they needed to get about ten miles from it, immediately. “So if that’s half the reason, what’s the other half?”, she quipped.
Everyone thought that after the terrorist/environmentalist group Golden Gaia was eviscerated at the hotel, well, that was it. The damage was so severe to all the participants that nobody dared even talk about the event. It was like a bad dream, a curse, and Edward in particular had no interest in discussing those 15 minutes of his life where, he was convinced, he would die. And yet, even after five years, all the imagery of the hotel felt fresher than this morning’s coffee. The darkness, the paranoia, the shadowy little figures scurrying around lopping off hands and feet. None of it made sense. It was supposed to be a straightforward operation. So straightforward, in fact, that the guns weren’t even loaded. They were just props for intimidation. Golden Gaia may have had a reputation for operating in the gray areas of the law, but they never stepped too far outside the boundaries. Their plan, that day, was simply to capture some hostage footage and send the message that they could reach out and touch anyone. But someone, or something, didn’t know that. It bought the façade, the show, based on what could be seen. Surveillance cameras couldn’t read minds.
Edward looked down at his cheaply made replacement right hand, picturing the prop gun he held that day in his real hand. Who made the mistakes? Why didn’t the police show up, why did everyone’s comms devices suddenly stop working? Why didn’t anyone have a shred of photos or video on their comms devices in the surrounding area? The hotel wasn’t an island. It was in a centralized location with plenty of street traffic and nearby residents in the area. But yet, not a single pixel of that event had been captured or shared on any kind of media. Based on his memory of all the events and all the strange facts surrounding it, if Edward hadn’t had his own hand removed, he wouldn’t have believed it. It sounded like an urban legend, something to keep people away from the hotel afterwards. Which it did, unintentionally, as word got out about what went down. But it was all word-of-mouth; the media pretended it never happened. Rather than gloat about a victory over the terrorists, it vanished. Not a single major news feed had a headline on it. None of it added up.
Golden Gaia suffered a big loss that day, and whoever wasn’t spooked after their hospital visit, left of their own accord, fearing for their very lives. Only a core group of hardened zealots remained, including Edward himself. “What else are we gonna do?”, he said to the others, on more than one occasion. It was half admission, half defeat, almost accepting the fact that they had been beaten at their own game. Not just beaten, but punished. He still remembers the SWAT team who arrived that day came charging in single file but seeing the pathetic, neutered state of the participants, turned into EMT in seconds. Tourniquets were maxed out to staunch the bleeding of those more injured than others. Edward remembers hoping they could save his hand at the hospital, but they lost it in the chaos of delivering everyone to the hospital; bypassing emergency services who probably would have kept it on ice, with his name on the box.
Edward stared at the discount, low budget replacement, and an itch started in his palm. An itch that didn’t belong there. It wasn’t painful, it was maddening. An itch some days, sharp pain others, tickling sometimes, hot and cold flashes. It was not there, and yet, these feelings were just as real as the rusting “stainless steel” of his fake hand. Doctors called it “phantom pain”, and rather than prescribing drugs to calm the nerves, they would prescribe happy pills, which were less addictive and acted on the brain directly. It did help him cope. In fact, Edward took his happy pills right on schedule. Every day for 5 years. Once or twice he had forgotten and just doubled the dose after he remembered the next day.
But he felt enslaved, by the drugs and his fake hand and the itch he couldn’t scratch. He felt the grudge growing bigger in his stomach. Golden Gaia needed to take this to the next level. They needed revenge. Edward needed revenge.
A rage had been building in his heart for five years, an unquenchable thirst not unlike that unscratchable itch in his palm. He closed his fist and smashed it on the desk, the shock causing a pen to roll just over the edge and fall to the floor. It was time to start planning. There were a lot of loose ends, unanswered questions, and he couldn’t formulate a plan without answering some of those questions first. Major problem. Luckily, he was resourceful. He didn’t exactly have a huge network of like-minded people, not anymore, but he knew where to start looking. The others that remained in the organization had a war chest he could borrow funding from, if that stood in the way. All he needed were a few people that knew more than he did, with problems that money could solve. That was his angle and it never failed. Junkies that needed a fix would talk. Big shots that were over-leveraged could be convinced. Even off-duty cops hustled for credits after hours, as hired security. And then…there were the vets. They were usually half drunk, chewed up and spit out, and two days short of their pension. He found them intolerably verbose and tried to avoid them, when possible, although he would make exceptions if he felt it would really lead to something. This would take time, and Edward whispered to himself, “fuck it”, it had already been five years. What’s a few more? Nothing would improve in the meantime. He turned and looked at his bottle of happy pills. There was one left. He unceremoniously opened the bottle and poured the last pill in the sink. He was done being a slave, no matter the cost. The hand itched again and he absentmindedly scratched it.
Res and Sheepdog took a brief lunch in a neighboring building that served dim sum and Thai food at very reasonable prices. It didn’t hurt that they both loved Asian food, which sometimes made Sheepdog homesick, being so far away from his native Singapore for work. To Res, these dishes might as well have been apple pie, because, growing up in her area, it was as ubiquitous and American as a hotdog or a hamburger. Also, it was fast, nearby, and top quality, flying in ingredients daily as needed, according to rumors. Res glanced at her watch and realized she only had a few minutes before the next client call. She snatched up her purse, left a few credits for a tip, and told Sheepdog she would talk to him later, as he was still working on a plate of Pad See Eew. With a flip of her hair, she headed towards the skybridge that connected the buildings, the low heels of her shoes pounding out a hurried rhythm of clock-clock-clock across the tile floor.
Rather than taking the call at her desk, she reserved a private room and booked it for an hour. She could log in via the terminal there and bring all her personal data and notes up without hassling with a laptop, but she still brought her physical notepad for assistance. A few moments after she settled, she reached out to the client who answered immediately. While his voice was clear, no background noise, she could hear some form of audio manipulation on his end of the line, probably the same anonymizer he used before, which would shift between low and high tones of voice. And on his end, he was seeing her old-school video game avatar again, only this time, Res was using her real voice. Risky, but just a little. He already knew who she worked for and the nature of the business, so it seemed a more personal touch. “Hello, can you hear me ok?”, he asked. “Loud and clear, but can we back off on the voice hilo? Let’s pretend we trust each other a little this time”, Res replied, and the client agreed. The voice now sounded natural from his side. This was a little more intimate in the digital age, like a second date where some of the pretense and peacocking is dropped.
After a few light greetings were exchanged, the client got to the point. “As I’ve said before, I take my privacy and safety very seriously, which brings me to your organization. I’ve heard nothing but good things from a few people I rub shoulders with, who are also shielded. I think I may have a secret that needs to remain guarded at any cost, therefore I must be shielded at any cost. If what I know and what I have done can be connected, it would have devastating global consequences and cause irreparable damage. To me, and to your organization, among many others.”
Res didn’t like the tone here, because even if it was true, it sounded like borderline blackmail. Like if we don’t protect him and bring him on board, things could get unimaginably bad. Inflated sense of self-worth, narcissism, delusions of grandeur, or the real deal? A few indirect questions could fill in the gaps.
Res lightened her tone to be a little more disarming (and corporate neutral), then began questioning the client. “We get approached by a lot of very important people harboring secrets. After all, it’s in our DNA to protect high visibility and elite clientele with total airtight discretion. What separates you from the others that didn’t pass our standards?”
The client replied, “I seriously doubt the secrets the others keep are this potentially dangerous. I’m not some kind of serial killer with a list that needs legal protection. I’m in possession of information that I discovered, decided to act upon, and my reach is absolutely beyond global. My secret transcends this planet, no joke. But I can’t say more without acceptance and ironclad nondisclosure agreements on your organization’s behalf. Think of me as a wizard with the only key to Pandora’s Box.”
Res briefly scribbled in her notepad the last sentence. It seemed to carry a great deal of weight and would make a strong justification for admitting the client to the program, if it was true. There was an urgency to his voice, an almost pleading tone; clearly, time was a factor here. He needed in quick.
Res then asked, “Are these state secrets? Are you in possession of secret knowledge about this organization, the governing bodies, other individuals within this organization, or information that could impact national security?” Without hesitation the client answered “yes” with no further clarification. This would not be a standard client engagement, were she to accept him.
Res opened a new client form marked Top Secret – ASE and direct management only, the highest tier of discretion available, and began asking him for personal details. A wire transfer of 5 million credits was required up front to process the client form, and the last piece of information she needed (as she waved her manager over for secondary approval) was the client’s legal name. The engagement had begun. There were three signatures required with today’s date. Resonant Frequency, the manager, and the client…
Rex Tarkington
The rest of the details would take a few weeks to process, but everything said thus far was entered into the record for legal to fall back on if Mr. Tarkington mislead them during the process. An AI would have to be chosen and assigned to assist with training, surveillance, and stitching. He would be issued a closed-channel secure communication device. Res finished up with “many of our clients choose to get an Angel tattoo which is publicly visible and a warning to others. Would you like to schedule an appointment with one of our in-house artists to choose the design and apply it?” Rex declined and simply stated, “that won’t be necessary at this time, although I may propose an alternative in the future.” Farewells were then exchanged and Res told Rex, “Welcome aboard, and thank you for choosing the Splicer organization. Your secrets, and your self, will be safe with us.”
Rex wryly ended the call with “they damn well better be. I look forward to working with you.” He unceremoniously disconnected the call, and Res’s manager high-fived her on the spot.
Rex Tarkington was a genius. A certified, bona fide, Mensa-verified egghead. He was also extremely paranoid, and very indignant about that character trait. He believed, strongly, that anyone living in a surveillance state has an absolute right to privacy, and if there was anything he could do to advance the right to privacy, he would do it without a second thought. He spent decades in IT Security, where his mindset and perseverance made him very successful. Enough success that he could retire at age 27 and pursue his real goals. He sunk countless hours into studying, then breaking, security protocols and very high-level encryption. But at this point, he wasn’t doing it for any particular company or vendor, he was doing it to try and reset his own comfort level. Being behind the scenes, watching and fighting off digital attacks, it was old hat by now, especially since his crowning achievement was a defensive AI he programmed himself over a few years. He proudly named it T-Rex, which was also the laziest name anyone could have imagined, based on his own name.
The funny thing about defense is that it’s just offense in reverse. You have to know certain things about the attackers, attack patterns, weaknesses, etc. in order to shore them up. You must know all your soft spots to harden them. By that same token, it’s not difficult to turn a defense into an offense. Attack others where you are weak, assuming a certain amount of commonality across organizations is in place.
For example, regardless of how big or wealthy a corporation becomes, they are often stuck with very outdated servers and hardware somewhere in the network that are easily exploited. Legacy systems, custom programming, vestigial limbs that nobody ever spent money to rebuild and replace. Every company has these “legacy assets” that they can’t do without, and someone in the organization is aware of it. As time goes by and these legacy assets accumulate and remain unpatched, they represent a challenge for the attacker, because no matter how old an attack vector becomes, it has to stay in the toolkit just in case it’s found. This swells the toolkit over time, to the point where nothing can be discarded and you have an enormous, unwieldy bag of tricks. It just comes with the territory.
Years after T-Rex was released, security researchers had turned it inside out and made it an attacker. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a major blow to Rex’s organization in particular. Despite how paranoid and careful he had been, he had left the door to the toolkit open for expansion for licensed owners, which malicious actors used to add their own bag of tricks to what they called Xer-T, the inverted version of T-Rex. Security organizations would sometimes stage virtual battles between T-Rex and Xer-T to essentially watch the AI battle itself, to look for flaws or improvements. That was actually beneficial in testing, and some would sell improvements back to Rex himself. But honestly, none of this interested Rex at this point. He had gone off on another tangent entirely. Let the product managers and coders worry about all this.
In the information technology field, and security, there’s a term known as RCA, or root cause analysis. The concept is simple. When there’s a problem, keep digging even after it has been solved to determine the root cause and apply your permanent fix at that level. Rex had been doing RCA’s his entire life in one way or another, and was particularly skilled at it. Which, inevitably, led to him creating a root cause of his own, solving a lot of problems he had with the state of the world.
He got an idea after watching a documentary about zebras in the wild. Their stripes were a natural camouflage, although appearing fairly uniform and almost copied and pasted to the casual observer. It was discovered that the stripes short circuited the visual processing part of predator’s brains, namely, big cats. Something about the way cheetahs, lions, etc. see the world and process that world was truly confused by the stripes, essentially making the zebras invisible to them. Rex wondered if there wasn’t something similar in technology; after all, technology is based on human perception, so cameras and microphones are generally designed to only capture what people can see or hear.
Rex built up a very secretive research team, hand-picked and fully vetted, to dive into camera technology of all kinds. Cell phone cameras, CCTV cameras, traffic cameras, the hardware and software that drove them. What he initially discovered was not that interesting: they were almost all built upon the same core libraries, which meant at the lowest hardware level, they all behaved nearly identically. At some point during the early development of these devices, there must have been a competition between different technologies, and a single standard emerged. Or, as Rex saw it, a single point of failure…a single point of weakness. He poured millions into the team, moving the project goalposts regularly over the span of three years. He kept getting results, and eventually his company became the dominant player in the imaging device technology sector. How? By giving away upgrades for free.
Nations, states, and cities all took the bait, making TIDE, or Tarkington Imaging Design Engineering, the single largest supplier of hardware and software imaging solutions worldwide. His solutions were truly ingenious and easy to operate, simple to keep updated, and had the best price of them all. His tech was so good, it was being applied to satellites and space-based hardware platforms as well, because, again, the cost was too good to be true.
On more than one occasion, the press asked the main question. “Why is something this good, free?” And every time, Rex insisted that something that good must remain free, and he would be doing humanity a disservice by charging money for those products. That wasn’t a good enough answer for some people and rightfully so. It reeked of corporate diversion, but nobody could really find a problem with what he was giving away, and over time, people asked less and less to the point where TIDE solutions were the global standard. It’s just what you used, anywhere you needed surveillance solutions or cheap imaging for portable devices. He included premium features others charged millions for, like chip sensors that could detect light across the visible and invisible spectrum. The full spectrum sensor was a huge hit in the scientific community, and some labs were using it to explore black holes via space-based telescopes which had been upgraded with TIDE sensors. Spy satellites weren’t late to the party either, incorporating his upgrades as fast as they could launch space missions to retrofit the hardware.
One man, in one company, had essentially taken over the world of digital imaging in a few short years. Rex intended it. Because once Rex had ensured that his TIDE sensors were everywhere, in everything, he could finally relax.
I suggest you refresh your memory with the middle of Beat’s saga here first to maintain the flow.
Beat had a head full of new facts and a major puzzle to solve. He sat down at his terminal and opened some security tools, hoping to get lucky. He started encoding and decoding the name “robber” every which way. To start, he tried text to hexadecimal code.
726f62626572
He saved that for later.
Next, he tried converting that hex string to binary.
011100100110111101100010011000100110010101110010
Still nothing popped out.
He tried a childishly simple ROT-13 replacement algorithm on robber.
eboore
Nothing was clicking. Nothing made sense. He intuitively just tried looking up the website domain for robber.com. Registration was private. He bypassed the privacy setting and found the website was registered to the following:
Bulletproof Manufacturing and Aerospace Corporation (BMAC) 6572 Mockingbird Blvd Suite F Omaha, AR 72662
Now some numbers started lining up; he couldn’t believe his luck. Not only that but the abuse contact was even better:
In a few easy keystrokes, almost too easy, as if someone left breadcrumbs intended to be collected, Beat was one step closer to solving the puzzle. He did another few lookups from some other security tools to gather information on the company and the domain. The corporate website was nothing out of the ordinary, but they weren’t a publicly traded company so no deep digging there. The bottom of the page contained the typical array of quick links. Contact Us, History, Help, FAQ, Demo and Return to Top.
He took a peek under the hood with the HTML inspector built into his browser and started reading through the code. Yet another fingerprint became apparent; a snippet of Javascript was attached to the Demo link. The URL didn’t make the typical call to an internal function of the site and it wasn’t some early HTML 1.0 link either. In fact, it was a total anomaly. It was an encrypted link function which triggered a decryption after the button was clicked to provide the accurate URL to the user’s web browser without revealing the actual site URL. It was split into three parts to further obscure what it would take as input and pass on to the server. Beat grabbed the code snippet and transferred it to his sandbox server. As he watched the server logs, he saw the Demo URL transformed to this string:
More simple encryption. The repeating characters “rk” signified paired numbers or letters. Feeding that string into a Base32 decoder, there was the detonation:
011100100110111101100010011000100110010101110010
Converting that binary back into text: robber. Beat slammed his hand down on the desk and started gaining steam. Either he was misled into a honeypot, or he was right over the target. Going back to the original page, he clicked on Demo to see what would happen. Immediately, he got a connection refused error. Reloading more times, more connections refused. The easy part was starting to fade a tiny bit, but being an ASE, he was nowhere near running out of options. He launched PRISM, the global website penetration tool that had federally mandated backdoors built into all US-based websites. He entered the full URL for the Demo link into PRISM, and something curious happened next.
WARNING: PRISM ENHANCED MODE REQUIRED. ENTER PKI3 AUTHENTICATION TO CONTINUE.
Beat plugged his PKI3 card into the terminal and the dialog box on screen filled up with X’s in the blanks reserved for the password.
PRISM ENHANCED PKI3 BYPASS DETECTED. ELEVATING RIGHTS TO PRISM SILENT CIRCLE.
Beat paused. PRISM asked to elevate a single authorization level and somehow skipped to a mode that he didn’t even know existed. He then remembered having the same card in the Cerberus terminal. Did Cerberus modify the card? It was the only explanation, and he was hot on the trail of what Cerberus was after. PRISM then prompted him:
PRISM SILENT CIRCLE – WEBSITE DEMO ACCESS (Y/n)?
Again, Beat paused, feeling like he was at a point of no return. He hesitated to hit enter. This was about to take a hard left turn and he wanted to be prepared. He closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair and jammed his knuckles into his eyelids and twisted until he saw stars that quickly faded away. Cracking his knuckles, he took a deep breath and hit enter.
THANK YOU FOR USING PRISM SILENT CIRCLE. DEMO LOADING, PLEASE WAIT.
His terminal faded to a totally white screen, then to a black screen, then back to a gray screen somewhere in between. One by one, the letters from the PRISM prompt flew off the screen, in every direction, accompanied by old cartoon sound effects. Next, a black mask came into view with artificial glass eyes staring blankly towards Beat. No face, no body, just a bandit mask with 3d eyes.
He heard a voice coming from his speakers. “Welcome, PRISM SC user. I am Robert. I have stolen your letters as payment. What I steal next is up to you. Choose your desire:”
Another prompt came up on screen:
DO YOU DESIRE FAME, FORTUNE, OR POWER (Fa, Fo, Po)?
This was a game, and Beat wanted to bend the rules. He typed in MORE and hit enter.
YOU DESIRE MORE THAN FAME, FORTUNE AND POWER. IF THIS IS CORRECT, STANDBY FOR 5 SECONDS. TO ABORT, PRESS ANY KEY.
Beat simply waited.
MORE DATA IS REQUESTED. DO YOU HUNGER FOR KNOWLEDGE? (Y/n)
He hit enter again.
KNOWLEDGE TARGET NUMBER REQUIRED TO CONTINUE. TO LIST KT’S, ENTER L. OTHERWISE ENTER THE KT NUMBER.
More puzzles to solve. He hit L and started grinning ear to ear at the results.
KT TARGETS AVAILABLE:
DENNIS – 6581
CHARLES – 8580
FRANKFORD – 68001
NEWTON – A01
CERBERUS – CRB3
AGNES – ARM1
BLACKWATER – DEEP-C
COPERNICUS – COPER
ROBBER – EBOORE8F
Beat’s mind went into fast forward mode wondering what he’d discover. These were all named AI and he was dying to know what this system knew about them. But he had to stay on track. 15 minutes remained. Beat hit 8, for Copernicus, and watched the output.
The next morning, Res awoke with the gentle morning sunlight streaming in through her window for once. She stretched like a cat, yawned, got out of bed, got ready and headed to the office. As she arrived at her desk and logged into her terminal, she had a message waiting. It wasn’t any special priority but she opened it immediately. It was her manager, wanting to talk in his office “at her earliest convenience”. That was his way of saying now.
Res walked across the office floor to his office, peeked in and saw he wasn’t talking to anyone. She did the two knocks at the door frame, saw him nod, and entered his office, closing the door behind her. “So, how did the client call go yesterday? Everything lined up?”, he queried. “I’m not sure. The client seems pretty serious but I’d like to feel him out a little more before we commit to anything. I know, I know, growth is important, but you know how careful I am”, Res said. “Well, the client called this morning, the second I sat down at my desk, and wanted to speak to you again. When you’re ready for round two, say the word”, he said. Res thought for a moment. Why shouldn’t another ASE or even her manager do this round two interview stuff? But she was still curious from the previous day, and didn’t want to slide it across the table to someone else just yet. “I have some busy work to do this morning. If he can meet with me after lunch, I’ll be prepared”, Res said, buying time to line up some questions for the client. “Fair enough. I’ll let the client know you’ll contact him after lunch”, replied the manager. With that, Res cracked a smile and went back to her desk.
She opened a physical notepad she kept in the top drawer for client leads and thumbed through it, getting ideas for what sorts of things to ask the client on the next call. She absent-mindedly twirled the long side of her hair with her right hand, then a piece of crumpled up paper came flying over her workstation wall and skittered across her desk. She stood up and looked over at Sheepdog, who was already grinning ear to ear, not even trying to hide his guilt. “Do you need something”, Res said sarcastically, and Sheepdog replied, “Well, actually, I could use another pair of eyes on this weird stitch I’ve been reviewing. Got a few minutes?”
Res sauntered over to his desk and pulled up an extra chair, dropping his paper wad onto his desk as she rolled forward and looked at his main screen. “What are we looking at here?”, asked Res. Sheepdog began another one of his long-winded explanations, which was his trademark, but then got to the point. “Well, ok, so see this timestamp here? This is about 5 minutes before the…uhh…anomaly. I keep having different AI check it for missing frames or missing data but they all say it’s normal and complete. But see what happens when a few minutes go by, watch the car.” Sheepdog advanced the video a few minutes at a time, skipping dead spots. The scene was taken from a busy street corner, mainly high-resolution traffic cameras. Buses, cars, and people were going every which way, nothing unusual, but the car Sheepdog wanted to focus on was a Limousine. It pulled up to the corner, the driver got out, walked around to the passenger side, opened the door facing the sidewalk, and a man with a Bowler hat stepped out. He reached forward as if shaking hands with a familiar acquaintance, but nobody was there. Something was, because others on the sidewalk were splitting to walk around the Bowler man and “the nobody”. After a few moments, the Bowler man got back into the car, the driver walked back around to the driver’s side, and the car pulled away.
Res was starting to get the heebie-jeebies. “Is this all of the footage?”, she asked. “Yep. One of the linears passed this on to me and like I said, the stitch is confirmed complete. There’s no data missing”, Sheepdog said, “and I even asked the linear for more angles of this event. It was all redundant, the other cameras are showing the same thing from different vantage points.” Res replied, “Well, clearly, we’ve got faulty hardware”, and Sheepdog parried her reply with, “Nope, the linear ran a full hardware diagnostic on all those TIDE cameras. They’re practically brand new and checked out. Something else is happening here.”
“What’s the relevance of this guy in the limo to start with, are the linears getting bored?”, Res asked. Sheep said, “Well, I’ve seen it before, when the project was early. It was probably the same guy. Maybe this is testing footage for the linears, something obviously weird to get their attention, to make sure they are scrutinizing the feed. At the time I just assumed it was a glitch, but I always remembered it. This time the linear thought it was weird enough to open a case on it, at the risk of triggering a false positive, and I agreed it should have a case. To that end, we have already identified the man in the Bowler, and confirmed it with the license plate of that car. It’s a personal limo, belonging to Frank Schultz, of FS GMBh, a huge industrial manufacturer out of Germany. He’s shielded, we’ve worked for him for a long time.”
“Who is his dedicated AI? Don’t tell me it’s Strix, it would have sounded the alarm a long time ago when you first saw it. Beat told me how thorough Strix can be…”, mused Res. “It’s not Strix. It looks like—”, Sheepdog typed in a quick query, and they both read it aloud as the result came back. “Genesis?”
Since Beat’s detective story is so detailed and heavy duty, I think it’s time to fast forward to another chapter to give you (the reader) a break. Hope you enjoy this brief respite before diving back in.
From the chapter tentatively titled, Resonant Frequency’s Ghouls.
It was another rain-slicked night under the neon in the city. Sometimes, Res thought this town was made out of clichés. She was sure that someone had good intentions once upon a time, a long time ago, but judging by the current aesthetic of her surroundings, those good intentions had been layered over with papier mâché or plastic, with every surface obnoxiously bleeding advertisements of all kinds. Despite the typically wet weather, tourist groups in busses passed by, wearing VR glasses and marveling at what the city once was and the history it lived through to get to what it is now. Growing up here, Res never viewed it as a tourist. She’d seen all the statues, the post-modernist red sculptures in corporate squares, and a few landmarks from the city’s glory days, when entertainment required space to view and much more space to create. It didn’t surprise anyone that a city which revolved around creating and selling fantasy, eventually became a cliché-filled parody of itself.
Res nearly stepped off into a deep puddle with a rainbow-colored surface as she walked to the bar. She was distractedly deep in thought about a recent meeting with a potential client. The client insisted they meet via commlink which provided security, audio, and video, but the artificiality of it all meant the client could be anyone or no-one at all and gave no clues about their location.
People used all manner of tactics during these types of meetings to hide their identity. Voice changers, high resolution backgrounds, video feeds of hired actors or AI-generated people who never existed. It was never 100% real, on either end of the call. Res herself preferred to appear as one of her favorite video game characters, only made to look more human, and it was such an old throwback from a 2020’s video game, very few ever spotted the reference. This client did, and complimented her on her choice. To Res, that immediately dated the client, in their 40’s at the very least. But that was the only clue she felt confident identifying. Everything else about the client was a black hole. Still thinking too hard, she bumped shoulders with a patron leaving the bar as she walked in. She mumbled a quick “sorry” and found a spot at the end of the bar, where the bartender expected her to be.
“The usual?”, he asked, as Res slung her wet jacket over a hook under the bar in front of her seat. “Sure”, Res replied, and got a shot of Jack Daniels with a beer chaser before she could get situated. He must have seen her coming in and had it ready. That’s what you call your home bar, and being a regular comes with those sorts of privileges, in the right places. Res was pretty sure the bartender’s name was Kirk, or Keith, but she wasn’t great with names, even after coming to the bar for the better part of 5 years. To be tricky, she just called him K and spared herself the embarrassment. K looked her over for a moment and asked, “something on your mind? You’re looking distant tonight.” “Yeah. Work”, she replied, and he met her with an understanding smile as if to say, you don’t have to go into it. Res downed the shot and followed it with a mouthful of Red Stripe beer. She liked to unwind and slowly drain the bottle until she loosened up a little before getting seconds.
Looking around the room, it appeared to be full of locals. Cliques that were easily identified by their conformity to one style or another. In one corner, she saw the WW3 vets, usually wearing old fatigues with high and tight buzz cuts, and visible scars worth a story. Nice guys for the most part, as if they’d already had their share of fights so only the good stuff was left. Further down the bar she saw a group of Moderns, with their shaved heads, glowing fingernails, and designer skintight clothing, each outfit built specifically for each person from a single designer in the middle of the country somewhere. They mainly kept to themselves and stuck to Smart Drinks, microdosing psychedelics to keep them sharp. Next to the Moderns were the Luddites, a group that intentionally rejected technology and were the polar opposites of the Moderns, not a single cell phone or set of VR glasses among them. They were just chatting quietly to themselves and deliberately, intentionally, sipping aged whiskey.
Over at the pool tables near the jukebox were some younger people she didn’t recognize, wearing custom slogan shirts. One man’s shirt read “Who is Genesis 15?”, and it was animated to fade to white, then paint itself as if a black paintbrush was inking it one letter at a time. Animated shirts were extremely popular with that age group and they regularly traded animation patterns with each other based on pop culture, memes, recent news or whatever else they found funny or relevant. They were all products of their own online culture and many of the designs were inside jokes, adding to the cool factor.
Res took another slug of beer after cataloguing the room. She was comfortable here, and didn’t stand out in any particular way, other than being essentially unaffiliated with these groups. She knew a person here and there from each group and they’d chat from time to time, but they always approached her wanting to talk. As she relaxed into her barstool, her mind drifted back to the client meeting. She was mulling it over, trying to identify anything else from the call. It was her nature, and part of what made her good at her job as an ASE. The client had told her all the standard things from people who want to be Shielded. “I have a valuable life, and privacy and secrecy are paramount to my existence. I have made enemies thanks to my decisions, and some of them want me out of the picture. I’m not paranoid, I am hyper-aware.” Knowing what Res knew about the DAA’s in the past, it was most likely true, but something sounded like it was worded awkwardly. The client continued, “I seek your company’s services not out of desperation, but out of a need to remain safe. I have seen the invisible, and I think it’s a threat”. That last sentence… what could the client be hinting at? A lot of things are invisible, like the air, but a stiff breeze blowing leaves down the sidewalk makes it visible. Did the client actually witness something outside normal perception, or was it just a clunky metaphor for finding out something they weren’t supposed to know?
She didn’t put much more thought into it. She was here to relax, and by the time she raised 2 fingers, K was setting down another shot and another beer. Suddenly, from behind, someone grabbed her left elbow just above the joint. He leaned in close and whispered in a deep, gravelly voice, “don’t panic. No sudden moves. Come with me, we need to talk.” She was startled, but as he let go and headed towards the corner with the WW3 vets, she downed the shot, casually patted her hip to make sure her self-defense was in place, and followed him. He was much taller than Res and cleared a path through the room past the vets and into a short hallway leading to the bathrooms. It was a little quieter there than the din of music and conversation in the rest of the bar.
“This the way you pick up girls, stranger? Does it ever work?”, she teased, trying to hide her nervousness. “Dunno, never tried to apply it that way. I’m supposed to deliver a message, and I’ll make it quick.” “Well, I’m here and I’m listening”, she replied. He continued, “I’m Dec, and I’ve been trying to find you on behalf of a certain someone who can’t be here to tell you himself. So, listen very carefully. You are about to stumble across a ghost. When you do, ignore it. It will save everyone a lot of time and trouble. There are things that are above your pay grade, and mine.” Dec paused for a moment as someone exited the bathroom, then went on. “I have a pretty good idea of what you do. But what you do is not the top of the pyramid. There are others above”, he said as he pointed upwards, towards one of the many cameras. That’s when Res caught one interesting detail. On that same hand, Dec was wearing a flat-topped ring with an insignia stamped into the surface. A triangle with an eye suspended in the middle. He then said, “I apologize for startling you, but I find it very effective in getting people’s attention. Hope I didn’t leave a mark. And remember, leave the ghosts alone. Don’t get too curious.”
Dec turned and walked back into the bar, as Res ducked into the bathroom to relieve some liquor and beer. By the time she was done, she went back to her spot at the bar and Dec was gone. Hastily scribbled on a napkin under her beer was a name and number. Dec. 101-338-0FDA. No note, nothing else, and she had no idea what the hell he was talking about. Ghosts? Like, actual ethereal ghouls that haunt old buildings, or a metaphor? Just who the hell was that guy, and why does he think he knows so much? His ring hinted at the Splicer organization, but as far as she knew, they didn’t have goons walking around scaring people with crab-claw elbow grabs and vague warnings.
Two more fingers up, and K was right there with another shot. “You ever see that guy before”, she asked. “What guy?”, asked K. “The guy that left this number on this napkin. And who uses hexadecimal code in a phone number? 0FDA?” “Sorry hon, I must have missed him. Busy night tonight, some thirsty strangers here along with you locals. Is something wrong?”, he replied. “Not sure”, Res said, “this has just been a weird day I guess.” She looked at the napkin again before stashing it in her purse. She finished most of her beer, got her tab squared away, and headed out into the rainy streets to go home, nervously glancing at the shadows as if someone was hiding, waiting for her to walk past for another ambush. She made it home safely in a few minutes, and moments after entering her high-rise apartment unit, she tossed her wet jacket on the rack, her keys on the kitchen table, and carefully unfolded the napkin and left it there too, face up, as if she would forget. She ran a hot bath, soaked for a while, and crashed out for the night. No ghosts yet.
