Cyber Dreams 2.32 - Surprises (Patreon)

Some puzzle pieces coming together, but we still have a ways to go. Happy to hear your thoughts.

-Plum

Long before she’d entered Grave Tower, Juliet had turned off the wireless access points on her deck, so she had to physically connect her data cable to it before Angel could take a look at the information she’d copied off the little drive that had belonged to, presumably, Joshua Kyle or one of his coconspirators. As soon as she made the connection, Angel displayed the drive’s contents in a semi-opaque window on her AUI—one large, encrypted volume.

“I’ll need some time to gain access, but I’m pulling some tools from the net and can run them more quickly on the deck. Give me a couple of minutes to get it started, and then we can leave it to work while you go about your business.”

“Right. It’s safe to eject the stolen drive?”

“Yes.”

Juliet nodded and touched the commands on the little display, and when the dime-sized plastic disk popped out, she palmed it and said, “If I flush this, will they have any way to trace it back to my room?”

“Not likely, Juliet—there are thousands of toilets and drains tied to the wastewater treatment for this tower, and it’s not one of the newer arcologies. Pipe monitoring systems are quite uncommon, costly, and difficult to maintain.”

Juliet cracked the tiny disk in half against the edge of the sink, then did each half into quarters. In four separate flushes, she sent it on its way to the wastewater treatment facility in the tower's depths. “How’s it coming?” she asked, peering at the screen on her deck.

“I have the cracking routine patched and am starting it up; you should have access to that drive’s contents sometime in the next twelve hours. It could be as soon as five minutes if we’re lucky.”

“I can unplug you for now?”

“Yes. Your drive is at ninety percent battery; I recommend attaching the external battery pack you purchased.”

“Okay, I will.” Juliet undressed and climbed into the shower. She’d already had to restart it twice due to the built-in timer, but she didn’t care. She reset it again and stood under the showerhead, letting the hot water drum against her scalp. She was tense, and a general feeling of stress hung over her, making her feel like she needed to be moving fast, but that was one of the reasons she’d decided to make good on her show of taking a shower; she needed to slow down and think before she did something foolish.

Juliet was reasonably sure she’d gotten away with the data drive theft. She was also confident that Angel could get her out of the tower, despite the watchdog. Both of those facts, combined with her successful acts of espionage on the GARD level, were giving her a little too much confidence. Corpo-sec agents could bust into her apartment at any second for no other reason than Gordon had a feeling she was hiding something. She had to remember that—the “rules” were just for show when it came to how corpo execs treated their underlings.

Thinking of corpo execs and their underlings, Juliet couldn’t help images of Polk’s pale face, streaked with blood, from popping into her thoughts, and she fervently hoped the sergeant would be all right. She’d met a lot of people in her short time at Grave, and Polk was one of the few who genuinely seemed like a decent person—tough, but decent. “Maybe it’s just because I never got on her bad side,” Juliet grinned as she spoke into the streaming water, thinking about how Houston loved to get a rise out of the sergeant.

When the timer wore off, and the water stopped flowing, Juliet dried off, wrapping a towel around her hair and another around her body, then she walked out to fish a clean uniform out of her wardrobe. She’d gotten dressed and, in the process, dropped her extra battery for her deck into one of the towels on the floor when Kent spoke up, “Ms. Roman, I’ve been instructed to remind you to fill out your daily report for GARD and to respond to a message from Command.”

“Will do, Kent. Thanks.” She’d noticed the annoying numeral “2” above the watchdog icon but hadn’t wanted to look at it yet. Before opening that can of worms, Juliet picked up the towels and returned to the bathroom, where she made a show of wiping up splattered water on the floor and counter as she connected the battery pack to her deck. That done, she started a load in the washing machine and sat down at her little kitchen counter to open the watchdog.

The questionnaire was simple, and she marked all the questions as “normal” or “does not apply.” After she’d submitted it, she opened the other message and sighed with annoyance:

Lydia Roman:

You are to report to the clinic on level 25 at 1500 for a CT scan. Make sure you’re on time.

“It never ends,” Juliet sighed. She glanced at the clock on her AUI, saw she had about an hour before the appointment, and then wandered into the bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror. Her hair hadn’t grown at all, one of the side benefits of having programmable hair follicles. Her face was leaner than she was used to, and her eyes belonged to a stranger—pale blue and beautiful. Still, she had circles underneath them, and despite all of her exercise, she looked wan, paler than she was used to.

She tsked at herself, and when she felt she’d put on enough of a show, she glanced down at the deck—the cracking software was still running. “Not our lucky day, Angel,” she subvocalized.

“It’s been less than an hour. You may yet get ‘lucky.’”

Juliet went into her room, sat at the foot of her bed, flopped back into its soft embrace, and stared at the ceiling. She wanted to do something, wanted to find out what the deal with Joshua Kyle was—what he’d done to Polk, what he had to do with GARD. She wanted to know why Commander Gordon had been in charge of the “field command” after things went to hell. Why wasn’t Anderson, the commander of Charlie Unit, down there? Had he gotten in trouble because of the team’s failures? Why hadn’t White and Delma been able to make their way to Polk and Juliet’s location?

Juliet clasped her hands to her head and growled in frustration at her unanswered questions. Kent cleared his “throat” and said, “Are you all right, Ms. Roman?”

“Yes, Kent. I’m human, so I like to act out on my emotions from time to time. No need to report me to anyone.” Juliet frowned, and her voice was heavy with snark.

“Ms. Roman, I don’t feel you’ve done anything that warrants a report to your superiors or medical. I was simply concerned.”

“Were you, Kent? Do you feel things, or are you programmed to watch the occupants of this building for aberrant behavior and then to feign concern?”

“The latter, Ms. Roman.”

“Thanks for the honesty.” Juliet groaned, then sat up and said, “Kent, what’s the status on Sergeant Polk?”

“I’m permitted to tell you that she is currently in surgery, and the prognosis for at least a partial recovery is good.”

“Damn,” Juliet sighed and flopped back onto her bed again. “I guess I got lucky, huh, Angel?”

“I don’t think you were lucky, at least not in the encounter with Joshua Kyle; I’ve been replaying my data from the incident, and it does appear that your psionics lattice received the damaging signal and directed it away from your brain, much as a lightning rod would channel electricity away from a structure it was meant to protect. I also measured a surge of your own that helped to push it on its way.”

“So the damned GIPEL saved me?”

“I thought we weren’t using that term?”

“C’mon, Angel!”

“Yes, I believe the GIPEL, along with your natural propensity for psionics, saved you from the brunt of the attack. I’ve made you a visualization of my readings.” A window appeared in Juliet’s AUI, and a video began to play. It showed a three-dimensional image of a brain—Juliet assumed it was hers—and, entwined with the folds and crevices of the gray matter, was a silvery, spiderwebbed structure with hundreds, no, thousands of branching offshoots. The image was of the surface only, so Juliet had no idea how deep that silvery lattice went.

The video started with a full rotation of the brain, then she saw a bright red light flare at the top front portion of the lattice, and Angel said, “The red light is meant to represent the intrusive energy of the attack. See how it flows along the bio-silver lines? Note how it stalls as it fully propagates the lattice. Now watch.” Just as Angel finished speaking, Juliet saw blue light surge up from the back of the brain, rush through the lattice and fade away as all the light washed back out through the crown where it had first begun.

“So the blue light is my brain’s electrical signal?”

“Yes, though I added the colors for ease of comprehension; I’ve no idea if the energy from Kyle or from you have any color at all.”

“Yeah, I get that, Angel. Well, even if I have some sort of innate defense, it wasn’t perfect. I lost my vision for a few seconds and definitely had some bleeds.”

“Still, you fared much better than Sergeant Polk.”

“Oof, don’t remind me,” Juliet sighed, an image of Polk’s ashen, bloody face intruding once again on her thoughts. She sat up and walked into the bathroom, closing the door behind her, so she didn’t have to put on a show for Kent, and then looked at her deck. A green checkmark on the UI indicated it the cracking program had completed its work. “We’re in, Angel!” she subvocalized, struggling to keep from speaking aloud.

Juliet pulled out her data cable and thrust it into the slot on the deck, and breathlessly waited for Angel to go through the file. “There’s contact information for the people Sergeant Polk told us were Kyle’s coconspirators, along with half a dozen others. I’m seeing at least nine names that I can cross-reference with the GIPEL databases. Juliet, there’s a saved log of a watchdog chat session; you’ll want to read this.”

“Put it up!”

October 22 - 0740

Hey, Parker. I’m sending you this via the watchdog because if you leave it, my intel is wrong, and we’re both fried. I’m not wrong, though. I know you won’t believe me, but the simple truth is that I’ve heard your thoughts. I know you work for WBD, I know you’ve compromised the watchdog, and we need to speak. Whether you believe me or not, there are people at GRAVE who do, so either play ball, or I’ll fill them in on your double life.

October 22 - 0741

Are you nuts? You’re goddamn lucky I was at my desk when this came through; if Chang or Stevens or one of the others on my team were sitting here when you messaged me, we’d both be on a one-way trip to a very deep hole.

October 22 - 0749

I’m not an idiot. I looked into your duty schedule. Listen, I don’t give a shit what you’re doing here for WBD, but you’re going to help me and some friends circumvent the watchdog. Long enough for us to get out, at least.

October 23 - 1223

I’ve been thinking over your message. I already neutered your watchdog; otherwise, this little conversation would be absurdly dangerous. Give me your friends' names, and I’ll do the same for them. Sooner or later, your supervisors will figure out something’s wrong, though, and I’ll have to play dumb and fix the problem. You’ll probably be blamed for hacking, so I wouldn’t hang around here too much longer.

October 23 - 1225

You will cover for us, or one of my friends (not one I’ll give you the name of) will be sharing your details with Grave corpo-sec. We need about a month to accomplish what we’re working on.

October 24 - 0744

Listen, I’ll help you, but you need to stop messaging me on the watchdog! What if I have a sick day or get called into a meeting? Like I told you, your watchdog is neutered, so just send me encrypted messages from now on. You’ve got my name; I’ll have my PAI watch for it. Send me the names of your “friends.”

“Holy shit,” Juliet breathed, glancing quickly at the door when she realized she’d spoken aloud. She subvocalized, “He was reading people’s thoughts, Angel. He lied to GARD just like we did. How many more are out there? Is Grave this incompetent?”

“Either incompetent or completely ignorant of the potential of their program.”

“Corpo culture—fail upward, am I right?”

“There’s some veracity to that old canard, yes.”

“We need to figure out who Parker is. I bet he’s the one who messed with White and Granado and kept them from finding us in those tunnels. Kyle probably messaged him to do it while he and his friends were bolting. Do you think he was lingering because he realized he’d dropped his deck? What else is on there, Angel?”

“Parker is Dillon Parker, and I have his corporate ID; it was attached to the chat log. I believe Kyle was saving this transcript as leverage. As to what else was on the drive, an enormous database of Grave financials, a classified report on a bio-medical subst . . . oh, it’s the bio-silver. Juliet, there’s quite a lot of info here from GARD—it would seem we weren’t the first to breach their security. Ah, this would explain things: one of the names in Kyle’s contacts is a GARD technician.”

“How do you know?” Juliet slapped her head and continued, “Nevermind, I forgot we snagged that GARD employee database.”

“Juliet, I’ll continue to analyze this information in conjunction with what we got from GARD, but you’ll be late for your CT scan if you don’t hurry.”

“Shit! Right . . .” Juliet flushed the toilet and separated her deck from its battery, slipping its lanyard over her head and tucking it down under her shirt, leaving the battery on the counter for the time being. She hurried out of the bathroom, out of her apartment, and toward the elevators and was quite surprised to see a fully kitted-out corpo-sec agent standing watch by the call panel.

He wore a combat helmet with a dark visor, much like the one she’d equipped her helmet with, so all she could make out was his dark complexion and frowning mouth as she approached. “Hey. What’s this about? They still on alert from what happened on B80?”

“Keep it moving, please.” He gestured with the muzzle of his SMG toward the open elevator, and Juliet frowned at him but stepped inside.

As the doors closed and the elevator began to descend, she said, “Kinda rude, wasn’t he, Kent?”

“The corpo-sec personnel on duty today are on high alert and are not permitted to make small talk, Ms. Roman.”

“I see.” The elevator dinged and opened for a trio of women in exercise gear, and Juliet backed up to make space.

“What’s with all the guards? He wouldn’t even speak to us,” one of them asked, looking at Juliet.

“There was one on your floor too?” Juliet asked.

“Yes!” another woman replied, biting down on the straw in her protein pouch.

“I don’t know,” Juliet lied, shrugging. She knew Kent would frown on her talking about the breach and probably rat her out to Gordon or something.

“Well, it’s freaking me out. Do you think there’s, like, a terrorist threat?” the first woman asked. Her friend shrugged and started to answer, but the elevator stopped, and the doors opened, and she backed up as Juliet shouldered through the women and out; they’d stopped at the clinic.

When she reported to the reception area, the man behind the desk wearing a white medical mask and pale blue scrubs frowned at her with his eyes and gestured for her to step through the swinging, double doors to his left. “You can go right in. We had to cancel several procedures to get your CT lined up.” He didn’t sound pleased.

“Oh, uh, sorry.” Juliet shrugged and started for the doors.

“No, I’m sorry. I’m sure it’s not your fault you had a medical emergency, and your commander called and screamed at me when I said there wasn’t any availability.”

“She did?” Juliet smiled, thinking of Garza dressing the receptionist down.

“She? No, honey, it was Commander Gordon. What a hardass! I’m sorry you have to work with him.”

“Oh,” Juliet didn’t know what to think about that, so she just clamped her mouth shut and pushed her way through the doors. The receptionist followed her and pointed to the first open door on the right.

“You can go in there. Please remove all your clothing; you can keep your underwear on. There’s a gown waiting for you.”

“Thanks,” Juliet said and walked through the door. The room wasn’t as small as a usual medical exam room, and she could see the bulky CT scanner lurking in the corner. A sign on the wall instructed her to do exactly what the receptionist had already told her, so she got undressed and slipped on the blue, paperweave gown. She tucked her deck in the folds of her jacket and sat in a chair, quite literally twiddling her thumbs. After a while, she subvocalized, “What is it with clinics and hospitals making you take all your clothes off? I mean, they’re scanning my head, right? I could see taking off a hat or necklace.”

“I can see it would be vexing.” Angel’s tone was consoling.

“My mom got an MRI once. Is that the same as a CT?”

“No, MRIs use magnets. They can create very detailed images of a person's insides, but modern CT tech combined with AI-assisted imaging can do just as well. The plus side is it won’t pull your cybernetics out of you with enormous magnets.”

“Angel, you're getting better and better at pulling off a deadpan, droll tone. Nice one.”

Someone tapped on the door three times, then another man, dressed identically to the receptionist, came in and said, “Knock knock! We ready for this? Should only take a minute.”

“Sure . . .”

“Great! Have a seat in that big plastic recliner.” Juliet stood up from the plastic chair and moved over to the indicated chair—more a reclining table, really. The tech wheeled the hulking plasteel scanner around, swiveling its big arm so that a domed section hung just over her head. Then he walked over to a counter, opened a cabinet, and returned carrying a gray blanket. When he placed it over Juliet’s chest, she was surprised by its weight. “To protect your organs from a little burst of radiation. Don’t worry; it’s just precautionary.”

“Uh-huh.” Juliet hated feeling confined, and the blanket was making her nervous. Beneath it, she squeezed her hands together, irritated to feel the clamminess of her palms—why did she always have to sweat when she was tense?

“Okay, I’ll be right on the other side of that glass.” He pointed to a mirrored window next to her, then, as he stepped through a doorway, he looked over his shoulder and said, “Please try to stay still; it’ll be over before you know it.”

Juliet did her best to keep from fidgeting, and when the lights dimmed and the machine clicked for several seconds, she just closed her eyes and concentrated on the darkness.

Woah! That’s interesting!

For the first time in a while, someone’s thoughts intruded on her own, and she recognized the tech’s voice. The clicking stopped, and she could tell the lights had been turned back up, but Juliet kept her eyes closed, picturing the tech’s friendly brown eyes.

Better call Doctor Fallow cause I don’t know what’s going on in there.

Juliet sighed, opened her eyes, and then subvocalized, “Angel, will the lattice show up in a CT scan?”

“Most definitely.”

“I think that tech’s freaking out about it.” She shifted uncomfortably under her heavy blanket and decided to fold it over her lap. When no one came back into the room for several minutes, she called out, “Hey, is someone there? I can probably explain the CT scan—I have something experimental from GARD. You should call Dr. Vance.”

No reply was forthcoming, so Juliet fidgeted some more. Then, after another five minutes, her watchdog app flashed red, and a vid call opened on her AUI. Cherise Garza’s face appeared, and she said, “Lydia?”

“Yes, Commander?”

“I just got word from the clinic. They shared your image with Doctor Vance—I guess your file was flagged by GARD, and they had to. Anyway, they aren’t worried about the, um, lattice? Is that the right word? I just got briefed myself.”

“Yes, I know what you’re referring to.”

“Well, they aren’t worried about the lattice, but you have a severely ballooning aneurism; they want to prep you for surgery right away.”