Racing through the blackness of cyberspace, dodging glowing neon IC programs like digital nightmares from the depths of some programmer's subconscious, keeping them from ripping out his forebrain. Feeling the rush of adrenaline and heat in his meat-body while his cyber-self stayed cool and smooth as glass and chrome. That's what Roy Kilaro thought he should be doing.
He should have been using his skills as one of the best programmers and deckers working for Cross Applied Technologies as part of the corporation's elite special operatives, the Seraphim. Breaking into the heavily guarded data-fortresses of rival corporations, stealing away their secrets, and thumbing his nose at the other deckers who tried to stop him. There was a secret war going on between the megacorporations in the hidden parts of virtual reality. He should have been there. That's what Roy Kilaro thought he should be doing.
What he was doing was sitting in an office in Cross Corp's Quebec headquarters scanning through data-traffic reports and system logs for the company's New England facilities. Wishing he was out there, in the Matrix, doing the job he knew he was capable of doing, rather than trapped in a maze of cubicles that seemed to go on forever.
If there's a hell, he thought, it probably has a lot of cubicles in it, Kilaro thought glumly as he continued watching the data scroll past. It was such mindless work. He could have written a program to scan through the activity logs, looking for any unusual data or variations from the normal patterns. In fact, he recommended it to his boss, and got assigned more fact-checking for his trouble.
Cross Applied Technologies was a leader in software development, but it still wanted a "human touch," and a human to place the blame on if anything goes wrong, he thought. So tried to imagine that the data was purloined from some other corporate system, that he was checking it for information that had street value, something the company could profit from. It helped to take the edge off the boredom, barely.
Kilaro settled back into his ergonomic office chair and stretched a bit. He tended to work deep when he was online, sometimes forgetting about the needs of the flesh. He stretched his arms, reaching up over his head and hearing the joints pop, then massaged his neck and rolled his head a bit, putting the data-stream on pause for a moment. He arched his back, then settled back into the chair, feeling its temprafoam cushioning adjusting automatically to the contours of his body. He reached up to brush his fingertips across the metallic jack plugged into the socket just behind his right ear, along the fiber-optic cable that fed data through the socket directly into his brain. He adjusted the cable a bit, it was caught on the arm of the chair. Then he settled back to return to work.
Resume, he silently thought to the terminal he was plugged into and the computer continued streaming data past him, information filtering through his brain as he sifted, like someone feeling through soft sand, or panning for gold in a muddy river. Then he struck something, like touching a hard object in the soft sand, seeing a gleam of gold in the mud.
Just a second, he thought, what's this? He focused in on the activity log coming from the company's Merrimack Valley Research Facility, in southern New Hampshire. A flicker of thought cross-checked the reference, bringing up a data-window in Roy's field of vision, showing an exterior photo of the facility along with all the relevant information.
Cross Corp. acquired the facility from a smaller bio-tech company in a buy-out deal two years previously. Kilaro remembered that deal. There had been some competition with Novatech for the opportunity to buy the firm that turned into a bidding war. But at the last minute Novatech mysteriously bowed out of the bidding, allowing Cross to pick up the firm for a much lower price when the owners panicked. Roy wasn't the only one who suspected some shadow operations made that happen.
The research facility was under the direction of the company's Bio-Medical Division out of Boston. The information must have gone through them first. But Kilaro knew the Information Systems people in Boston were rather lax. They were usually people who didn't have what it took to make it with the company's Software and Matrix Development divisions. They could have missed it.
He checked the log entries again. There it was a slight anomaly, nothing too significant. He could see how someone could have missed it. It looked like a minor glitch in the telecomm system, the sort of thing that happened from time to time, causing people to lose track of their voice and vid-mail or accidentally deleting some messages. But this looked more deliberate, more precise. Someone had intentionally deleted and changes parts of the outgoing message log.
Probably someone having an affair or something, Roy thought to himself. More likely some lonely cubicle rat logging on to one of those virtual sex hosts, where you can play with "digital dolls" that looked and felt like the real thing, but acted like something out of an adolescent programmer's wet dreams, since that's usually where they came from. It would probably turn out to be something like that, or something even less significant. Kilaro knew he should just flag the file and pass it on to the higher-ups in Information Systems, so they could send a routine notice to the person involved. But something told him to keep looking. If nothing else, it was a break in the routine; an excuse not to dive back into the endless sea of data that threatened to drown him.
He checked over the logs again. There were several missing sections. With a thought to his terminal, he ran some pattern-matching algorithms, nothing. It looked like just a random glitch in the system. Several different areas were affected. That could mean just a software or hardware problem, or it could mean whoever made the changes was extra-careful to make it look random. Flashing a command across the network at light-speed, Roy called up some additional data about the Merrimack Valley research facility. As he scanned through it he noticed that the facility was slated to get some extra security personnel, subcontracting with one of the local security firms. He checked the facility's maintenance schedule and smiled.
Boston's probably pretty nice this time of year, he thought, sitting back in his chair. And I've got some vacation time coming to me. Maybe I can get away for a couple of days, check things out down there, and see the city for Christmastime. He knew all the right channels to send his request through, which managers were likely to simply rubber-stamp routine documents that passed through their systems. In about an hour, Roy Kilaro's request to cross-train with the Information Systems department-by handling the routine maintenance and systems checks of the company's Boston-area facilities-was approved.
He copied the relevant data from the logs and downloaded it onto the optical chips nestled in the back of his skull near his brainstem, where he could call it up any time he needed to. Then he turned his attention back to scanning through the logs, his mood lightened by his impending trip. It would probably turn out to be nothing, but it was an opportunity to at least pretend he was involved in some fantastic intrigue like they showed on the trideo. Besides, while he was down in the Boston area, maybe he could see the sights and find some time in the evening to hit a club or two. He'd heard that Boston had some good ones, and he was looking forward to trying them out.
It was a hot night at one of the Boston clubs Roy Kilaro was thinking about. In the Avalon the crowd packed the dance floor of the club, writhing in time to the primal beat blasting from the speakers, moving to the pulsating lights flashing from the ceiling. The atmosphere was hot and dim, flashes of light showing through the haze of smoke that hovered up near the ceiling, like an artificial fog. People crowded around the curved bar that ran along one side of the room, set above the dance floor, where tiers of small tables and booths looked down, allowing people to sit and drink and watch the activities going on below.
Dan Otabi looked nervously around the interior of the nightclub as he allowed his eyes to adjust to the dimness, wishing he'd had the money to get the Zeiss replacements he'd wanted. The deep emerald green ones with the gold flecks and the light amplification that let you see at night as well as you could during the day. Like the eyes Ethan Hunt had on Shadowbreakers. Eyes that could stare any man down and make any woman's heart melt. Like the eyes Dan had when he was Ethan Hunt, fearless corporate operative working in the deep shadows of the metroplex. His hand wandered up to the jack behind his ear and he wished he was Ethan Hunt right then, or anyone else for that matter. It was the wish that brought him to the Avalon.
He'd done his best to dress for the occasion, like he'd seen in so many of the sims. But he felt woefully out of place among the club-goers and the people who glanced his way, scanning him from his short-cropped dark hair down to the synth-leather boots he was wearing before dismissing him with a shrug or even less and turning back to whatever they were doing. He looked around the club nervously, trying not to stare or to make eye contact with anyone. Looking for the person he was here to meet. He spotted him in a dark booth two tiers above the sunken dance floor. There was an electric moment of recognition, but Dan tried to stay as cool and calm as his contact.
He slowly picked his way through the crowd to get to the stairs, apologizing once when he bumped into an ork that towered half a meter above him, barrel-chested and bulging with muscle. The burly metahuman just grunted and kept walking with the violet-haired woman with him, she wore nothing but a strategically applied spattering of body-latex and glitter. Dan made his way up the stairs and over to the booth. His contact hardly moved the entire time, idly watching the dance floor below, seeming to take little or no notice of Dan's presence. Only when he stood in front of the booth did the man look up at him, making Dan wish for Ethan Hunt's steel-hard eyes again.
Oh, God, what am I doing here, he thought for what must have been the hundredth time. The man waiting for him was human, an Anglo, it looked like. His dark brown hair was rather greasy, drawn back from his face into a stubby little ponytail at the nape of his neck. He was unshaven, with several days' growth of stubble on his face and chin that partly covered up the puckered, reddish line of a scar running along the right side of his chin. Maybe from a knife fight, or a broken bottle, Dan thought to himself. His eyes were a muddy sort of brown that convinced Dan they were natural; since he couldn't imagine why anyone would choose to have eyes that looked like that. He wore a battered leather jacket over a heavy black T-shirt, and the hands resting on the table in front of him had a couple silver rings each. He looked Dan over with an expression of studied disinterest and Dan didn't quite know whether to bow or extend his hand, so he just stood there.
"You must be Mr. Johnson," the man said, just loud enough for Dan to make it out over the blaring of the music. The faint smile on his face showed that he didn't believe it was Dan's real name for a moment. He nodded toward to empty part of the booth. "Sit down." Dan slid into the booth gingerly, looking across the table at the man he'd come to meet, suddenly torn between what he had to offer and a desire to bolt out of the club and go back home.
"Did you bring the money?" the man asked abruptly. Dan nodded.
"Let's see it."
Dan fished into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew a slim plastic rod about ten centimeters long, holding it up so the man could see it. When he made a move to reach for it, Dan snatched his hand away, surprised at his own boldness.
"I want to see the merchandise first," he said, thinking about how Ethan Hunt handled things in the Shadows of Seattle sim. He kept his eyes focused on the other man, no matter how much he wanted to look away. The man reached slowly into his jacket and pulled out a plastic case. He set it on the table between them and Dan could see through the transparent lid that the inside of the case was molded black plastic around a flat optical chip with tiny markings he bent closer to read.
"That's it," the man said, "the cal-hot edition of Shadowbreakers VII. Complete and uncut."
Dan read the title etched onto the chip and looked up in awe. "You mean it has Winnona Flying-Horse and, and everything? The sauna scenes and"
"Everything," the chip dealer said with a slow, wolfish smile. Dan almost laughed out loud at the thought. He had to have it. He started to reach for it, but the man grabbed his wrist in a tight grip, picking up the chip-case with his other hand and shaking his head.
"Uh-uh, not until I get the money, and the price has gone up," he said.
"Wh-what?" Dan said, "but you said it was three-hundred and fifty nuyen!"
The man shrugged. "Supply and demand. This baby is a hot property," he shook the chip case for emphasis. "Especially after those explicit pics of Winnie 'mysteriously' hit the Matrix. You want a taste of the real thing-better than the real thing-then you gotta pay. You got a problem with that, you can take it up with the complaint department."
He nodded his head toward the top of the stairs. Dan glanced back to see the ork he'd bumped into standing there, leaning casually against the wall, his dusky skin almost blending into the shadows. Dan took in the heavily-muscled body that could snap him in two like a twig, along with the bald, scarred head, deep-set eyes, and the two small tusks that protruded over his upper lip as the ork gave him a toothy grin and slowly cracked his knuckles. Dan turned back to the chip-dealer, who hadn't moved a muscle, but knew that his point was made.
"How much?" he said.
"Five-hundred," the man replied without missing a beat.
"But I was told three-fifty!" Dan protested.
"You want the goods, it's five-hundred," the dealer said. "Of course if you just want a regular sim, I hear you can rent this one at Sim-Sation for 20 nuyen. They're all kid-safe and everything."
The man sat back with a mocking smile on his face. Like Dan was going to waste his time with that drek. He'd run all of those kinds of sims. They were practically like watching trideo compared to the stuff that came out of the California Free State. Their sims didn't leave anything out; you got to feel it all. It was like living out your greatest fantasies in the safety of your own home. They said the producers and programmers even tweaked the signals on their chips to "enhance" the experience, make it seem ever realer than real life. Once Dan got a taste of that, he couldn't get enough of it. Unfortunately, so-called "California hot" chips were illegal in the United Canadian American States. They couldn't be imported or sold, which was why Dan had to turn to other sources.
"It's not BTL, right?" he said slowly and the dealer shook his head.
"No way, chummer, this is quality stuff. We're not talking about brain-burners here this is just entertainment. The best."
BTL or "better than life" chips went even further than cal-hots. Dan knew about them, of course, everyone did. But he was honestly afraid of them. BTLs messed with the sim-signals of the chips to give users experiences you simply couldn't get in real life. They ignored things like fantasy stories in favor of sheer sensation. People said that jacking a BTL was like experiencing pure bliss, the direct stimulation of the brain's pleasure centers. It was so strong an experience that most BTL junkies didn't last very long. They didn't care about anything except jacking a chip, to the point where they wouldn't jack out even to eat or go to the bathroom. Of course, the dealers didn't want to lose their customers too quickly, so they built the chips to burn out after being used for a little while, keeping the users coming back for more. Sooner or later though, they'd figure out how to override the cut-out on the chip, jack in and never come back. They'd starve to death, lying in their own filth, until somebody found them and reported it to the police, or the organleggers and ghouls found them and turned them into spare parts for the illegal organ-banks or, worse yet, a quick meal.
Dan shuddered at the thought, but he was right, this wasn't BTL. He wasn't a junkie. It was just some harmless fun, a way to relieve all the stress from work. It wasn't his fault the UCAS made California sim-chips illegal. He wasn't hurting anyone.
"All right," he said tearing his eyes off the chip-case for a moment, "I guess I" he stopped in mid-sentence when he noticed the chip dealer wasn't even looking at him any more. He was staring out onto the dance floor with a look of amazement, even horrified fascination, on his face. The sound of Dan's voice brought the man's attention back to him momentarily. He glanced at Dan, back at the dance floor, then back at Dan.
"Stay here," he said, standing up and slipping the chip case into his jacket. He started striding toward the stairs. Dan turned in amazement to watch him go. As he bolted down the stairs, the dark-skinned ork called something after him, but Dan couldn't hear it over the sound of the music. He looked out onto the dance floor, wondering what the chip pusher had seen that made him leave so suddenly. All he could see was the mass of people; humans mixed in with some elves, orks, and trolls.
Then he got a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. The police! Maybe the chip pusher had seen an undercover cop or something in the crowd? Or maybe he simply planned to get Dan's money without having to make any kind of deal. He looked back at the stairs and saw the ork standing there, looking torn between going after his boss and coming over toward him. Dan didn't want to wait around to find out which he was going to choose. He got up from the table and headed for the other stairs as quickly as he could, weaving around the people who got in his way.
He bumped into a dark-haired woman near the other stairs. She was wearing a skintight synth-leather jumpsuit that clung to the curves of her athletic body, like Vita Revak in the classic Rambo XX sim, open at the neck to show an expanse of creamy flesh with a sprinkling of freckles. Her midnight hair cascaded around a beautiful face and she had a dazzling smile.
"Hey, honey, what's your hurry?" she asked him. Dan glanced back to see the ork heading slowly through the crowd toward him.
"Can I maybe get you a drink or something?" the woman continued. Any other night it would have been one of Dan's fantasies come true, but tonight his only thought was getting away. He stammered an apology and pushed past the woman to bolt down the stairs. He made his way through the crowd with a few angry protests and shoves from the people in his way before he reached the relatively clear area in the front and headed straight for the door.
***
The ork stopped at the top of the stairs and watched Dan bolt out the door. "Damn," he cursed under his breath as the woman their mark was talking to slipped out of the crowd next to him.
"Hammer, what the hell happened?" she said.
"I dunno, kiddo," he shot back. "Talon saw something." A line of worry creased her smooth brow as she scanned the dance floor looking for a particular face, then she headed down the stairs with the ork close behind her.
The man who'd been talking to Dan Otabi had vanished. In his place was someone who looked vaguely similar, but younger, cleaner, and handsome. He was standing on the edge of the dance floor, staring out at the mass of people, his eyes slightly unfocused. To most of the club-goers, he probably looked drunk or stoned out on something, a look that was hardly unfamiliar in the Avalon. But his friends knew it was more than that. His name was Talon, and he was a mage, with perceptions beyond those of normal people.
When she managed to reach Talon's side, Trouble could see that he was crying, tearing running unheeded down his cheeks as he stared out into the dimness of the nightclub.
"Talon? Talon?" she said. She had worked the shadows long enough to know not to interfere with a mage doing his thing, but she was also worried by the look on his face. She grabbed Talon's shoulder and shook him. "Talon! What is it? Did you see something?"
He finally acknowledged her, turning his tear-streaked face toward her, speaking just above the noise of the club.
"It was Jase," he said. "I saw him. Out here."
Trouble gave him a confused look for a moment as she felt a chill come over her. "Talon, Jase is dead. He died almost fifteen years ago."
He nodded. "I know, but I saw him, Trouble. He was there. I'm sure of it."