Cyber Dreams 2.41 - Just Deserts

I have questions I want to ask, but I don't want to spoil anything, so just let me know what you think, please! :)

Thanks,

Plum

“Why are you tapping your head?” Vance genuinely looked confused, bewildered even. He glanced at Gordon’s slack-jawed face, jerked his gaze back toward Juliet, and said, for the third time, “What’s going on?”

“Are you really this dense, Doctor? I thought you’d put things together by now. You don’t recognize me?” Juliet took a side step so she stood between Vance and the door, then crossed her arms and stared at him with her gun still in her right hand. “Maybe it would help if you imagined me helpless on a surgical table while you had Violet drill into my skull?”

“Roman! Damn it, Gordon!” He actually turned to the catatonic man as he cursed, “You said she was dead!”

“You’re a buffoon,” Juliet sighed. “How’d you get to where you are?” She was truly intrigued. “Just corrupt buddies covering for each other and giving each other a hand up whenever an opportunity arose?”

“You don’t know a damn thing!” Vance growled, his gray eyebrows drawing together. “The things I’ve discovered! The profits I’ve earned this company! Grave wouldn’t exist if not for my breakthroughs!”

“Well, that’s not so much to be proud of. Quiet now. Let’s not get too off-topic. Tell me, Doc, what did Gordon do with Commander Garza?”

“Garza? How should I know?” Vance licked his lips and glanced at Gordon again, his frown deepening. Juliet shifted so her needler was aimed more directly Vance’s way.

“If you keep lying, I’m going to have to start hurting you.”

“I don’t . . .”

“Quiet!” Juliet growled, extending the gun toward him. “Just sit there and shut up. Think about your words; choose them carefully.” Vance complied, clamping his mouth shut, and Juliet stared into his high-end retinal implants, watching the micro dilations of his pupils as his gaze shifted ever so slightly from Juliet’s face to her gun, to the door and back again, constantly cycling as his brain worked overtime, trying to think of what to say. Juliet endeavored to ignore everything else and just stare at those eyes, and then, just as she’d hoped, she heard him:

Silly little bitch. What’s she done to Gordon? Does she think Garza can help her? That’d be quite the trick from the ash bin at the bottom of an incinerator!

The thought was so shocking, the tone so cruel, that Juliet gasped and, before she could catch herself, she squeezed the trigger on the needler twice. Two hissing *clicks* sounded, and four thumbnail-sized blood stains appeared on Vance’s white lab coat on the right side of his chest. He convulsed violently, sliding down in his seat as his body seized up. “Damn it,” Juliet sighed, “I had a lot more to ask him, Angel.”

“We could wait while the paralytic fades.”

“No,” Juliet said, sliding her needler into her holster. “Make sure that door is locked.” She moved over to Vance, grunting as she squatted over him, grabbing him under the armpits and lifting him up into the chair. “At least he’s a small man.”

Once he was seated, she grabbed the other data cable sprouting from the back of the deck and pulled it around, surprised to see Vance didn’t have his data port concealed by synth-skin. She jammed it into the slot and then moved back to Chaudhry’s desk, sitting on the edge to watch as Vance joined Gordon in dreamer purgatory. “How long until the corrupted PAIs do irreversible damage?”

“A matter of minutes. Already, Gordon’s PAI is spreading its synthetic neural fibers unchecked. If it were stopped and removed right now, he’d never be the same. In a few hours, they’ll both be flooded with hormone stimulation, and if they aren’t discovered for a day or two, they’ll be completely mindless without the dreamer program running.”

“I don’t want there to be a chance they come out of this. I don’t want to find I’ve left some angry, powerful enemies behind.” Juliet fingered her vibroblade handle under her blazer sleeve. The truth was, she’d been afraid she wouldn’t be able to kill these two men outright. She’d never done something like that in cold blood before, and though she’d thought they were evil and deserved it, she’d chickened out and decided to let the dreamer program be their fate.

She’d rationalized her decision, figuring that putting the two men under the spell of an illicit Vykertech program would muddy the waters, stoking suspicion and misdirecting anyone trying to figure out what happened. “That’s still true . . .” Juliet said, frowning.

“If we lock Chaudhry’s office door and alter the access code, the odds of someone coming upon these two men in the next twenty-four hours are very small, Juliet,” Angel said, perhaps intuiting what she was thinking.

“When the charges go off in the server room, I think Grave will have their hands full.” Juliet nodded, then took another long look at Vance and Gordon, memorizing their faces and remembering Delma lying cold and near death in the canyon. She thought about Garza, a genuinely decent person in a management position—someone who looked out for her subordinates. Those assholes had killed her. They’d killed Houston, and who knew how many others. With a slight growl, she stepped forward to the table and pulled out her data cable, connecting it to the deck.

“Did you want me to do something?” Angel asked as the cable clicked in.

“Yes. You know the dreamer code inside and out, right?”

“I do.”

“Remember how you altered it to make a more peaceful experience for the dreamers in the ABZ?”

“I do . . .”

“I want you to do the opposite. Accelerate the alterations to the PAIs. Switch out calls for dopamine with calls for adrenaline and whatever makes people feel fear. Do you get me, Angel?”

“I do. Are you sure I should do this?”

“Yes, Angel. These two men are monsters. They’re responsible for the deaths of countless people. They do insane experiments and kill the subjects if they don’t work out right. They kill their peers! I don’t want there to be a chance they’ll come out of this!”

“I agree. Especially when considering poor Delma and what you told me about Gordon.” Angel’s voice had a new edge to it, and Juliet recognized the note of anger she’d heard up in the canyon. “Working,” she said, and menus and windows rapidly opened, expanded, and closed on the deck’s graphical UI.

Juliet sat down in the third seat at the table and waited while Angel did her work. She avoided looking into the glowing eyes of the two men because she didn’t want to hear their thoughts. Instead, she thought about Polk, happy the woman was alive, and about Delma, hopeful that she’d made it to medical help.

Ten minutes later, Angel announced, “It’s done. These men are not having a peaceful dream.” Juliet finally forced herself to look at Gordon’s face and saw that his eyes were wide, already gleaming with blue light as the PAI grew into his ocular nerves. His mouth was working rapidly, opening and closing, and his breaths were coming short and fast. Vance was in a similar state, and Angel said, “They’ll likely perish before too long, Juliet.”

Juliet stood, frowning, feeling less satisfied than she’d hoped. She felt unclean, not vindicated, and she hated these two men for what they’d made her do. She picked up her deck from the charging pad and wore it around her neck, then moved over to the desk, put her gun and knife in the briefcase, and closed it. As she snapped it shut, she said, “Angel, delete my copy of the dreamer program. I don’t want to have this anymore.”

“Understood and agreed.” Juliet thought she heard a note of relief in Angel’s voice. Did she feel the same? Had Juliet put a dark spot on not only her own soul but on Angel’s? She banished the idea of questioning whether Angel had a soul the instant it crossed her mind.

“This was dirty work. I’m sorry.” Juliet pulled the door open and stepped out.

“We’re a team, Juliet. We need to do the dirty work together.”

“That’s sweet, Angel, but we really don’t. I shouldn’t push my vendettas on you.” She began to follow her map toward the elevator bank.

“This is more than a vendetta, Juliet. This is justice, and I’d be angry if you didn’t let me help you. Do you want me to locate Violet now?”

“No, Angel. No. I can’t stomach more of this. She’ll suffer enough when GARD loses all its data, and Grave’s bottom line requires some serious reorganizing. Can you accept that?”

“I can. I’ve had my fill of dirty work as well.”

“Speaking of dirty work, do you think the messages I set up to go out from Chaudhry’s deck at home will do the trick?”

“Yes, I think they’re convincing. The message with sections of the dreamer program sent to DataSift Corporation should be especially effective. They’ll see the Vykertech signatures and will likely notify HSRIC, as you speculated. Such a committee getting ahold of the data with Chaudhry as the source will create a great deal of confusion around this whole affair.”

Juliet blew through the door to reception, neither looking left nor right, striding through the room in five long steps and then out, taking a quick left toward the executive elevator. She selected the parking garage, and as she waited for an elevator, she thought about what Angel said—HSRIC, or Human Subjects Research Integrity Council, was a watchdog group that all the major corps in Phoenix had subjected themselves to as a sort of mutual agreement to keep things like the dreamer program from happening. They’d raise quite a stink when they saw the code.

Juliet breathed a sigh of relief when the door opened, and it was empty. She stepped inside and felt it surge upward, and then Angel said, “Juliet, you have a second message waiting from Dr. Murphy and a new message from Hot Mustard.”

“Okay, hold them until we’re out of here, please.” She wondered what Murphy needed; she hadn’t heard from her since the surgery before the job. The first message could be anything—the doc had just thought about her and wondered how things were going, for instance, but two messages in twenty-four hours? Maybe something was wrong . . .

The bell rang, jarring her from her thoughts, and the door opened onto the garage. Juliet took two steps, and then she saw a familiar face, and her heart almost stopped. Jensen was leaning against the wall near the elevator bank, his posture relaxed and a flirtatious grin on his face as he spoke to a young woman in a business suit. He saw Juliet immediately, and his eyes tracked her for a second, narrowing, but he simply nodded, waving briefly with one hand and then turning back to the woman.

Juliet couldn’t see the woman’s face, but she giggled as Jensen said something, and he laughed too, reaching up to rub at his hair as though chagrined. Juliet didn’t need another hint—he was busy with his own thing, and though he knew she shouldn’t be around, he didn’t care. She hurried down the sidewalk, further into the garage, and then subvocalized, “I know you ordered me a cab, right, Angel?”

“Of course. Since you’re still pretending to be Chaudhry, you have a premium AutoCab waiting. It should be just ahead to the left.”

Juliet rounded the first corner, and there it was, a long, sleek sedan. “You know,” Juliet subvocalized as she opened the door with its dark-tinted glass, “I’m sure there are worse people in that company than the ones we dealt with.” With sudden paranoia washing over her, she leaned over and carefully inspected the cab's interior, feeling like someone was going to be waiting for her with a knife or gun. Nobody was within, though, and she shook her head, sliding into the rear seat. “How long has this cab been waiting?” she asked.

“I’ve been here for five minutes, Madam,” the cab’s stilted English accent replied.

“Let’s go. Drive. Head East.”

The cab began to drive out of the garage, and Juliet sighed, sitting back into the cushion. Angel replied to her earlier statement, “Everyone at Grave is going to experience a bit of trouble as a result of your actions. The messages that ‘Chaudhry’ is sending out will garner a lot of attention, and most of it quite hostile. Vykertech is a much larger corporation, and they’ll respond with a vengeance. Still, I’m sure the people in that corporation are just as bad . . .”

“Dealing with these corps is like,” Juliet paused, searching for a fitting analogy, “It’s like trying to kill a snake, but every time you cut off a head, three more grow back with new, disgusting strains of venom.” As the cab pulled away from the parking structure and Juliet felt a tight knot of tension she’d been carrying in the back of her neck relax, she said, “Has Rachel replied to my message? Have we seen any deposit?”

“No to both questions.”

“That’s not like her.” She frowned, watching the cars pass by outside her window, then said, “Play me Hot Mustard’s message.”

A vid screen appeared in her AUI, and Hot Mustard’s face appeared, grinning and badly shaved. His eyes were a bit bloodshot, and his surroundings were dim, but Juliet thought she recognized his apartment. “Hey, January.” He winked obnoxiously, which made Juliet guess he was drunk. “It’s been too long since I heard from you. I’m getting worried. I tried calling your friend, Honey, but she’s not picking up. You doing all right? I know you’re deep. I know you probably can’t even look at this message right away, but will you please get back to me when you can? I’d sure appreciate it if you stopped by when you got done.

“Listen, I know you’re kinda . . . between permanent places right now. I get that vibe. I know that’s sort of the reason we, well, we ain’t happened yet. You know? I’m not a dummy. Still, I’d sure appreciate a visit before you move on. Sheesh, you haven’t already put me in your rearview, have you? I hope you’re just busy with that job. I hope everything’s all right. Looking forward to hearing from you.”

Juliet’s stomach twisted a little, and she felt a surge of something like a mixture of nostalgia and sadness. She wondered at how distant she felt from the Juliet who’d gone shooting with Hot Mustard just a month or two ago. “I feel kinda bad about him,” she subvocalized, wondering how Angel might relate.

“You should call him when you are free, Juliet.”

“Yeah, I know.” She sighed heavily and rubbed at her eyes, noting the cab had moved out of the central downtown area and was still traveling east as she’d instructed. “Play me Murphy’s first message.”

Murphy’s face appeared in the vid window, and her rough, no-nonsense voice said, “Juliet,” she frowned for a second, then added, “Sorry, January. I’m still not used to it, you know? Anyway, I haven’t heard squat from you in over a month, and I started to get a bit worried last night. I dug through the vids of your surgery and the details on the implants those jokers gave me, and I see a problem, Juliet—there’s something fishy about that blood-washing implant in your arm. I swear, it looks like there’s an extra gland in there. I’m afraid it can be triggered remotely to do something to you. I need to check it out! Get back to me ASAP!”

“Are you kidding me?” Juliet rubbed at her arm. “Angel! Wouldn’t you notice something like that?”

“I . . .” Angel seemed hesitant, but then she pressed on, “I would notice it if it was part of the implant and connected to the embedded BIOS chip in any way. If the secondary function is housed separately and is set to receive a signal but never transmit anything, I’m afraid I’d have no way of noticing it.”

“Dammit! What’s Murphy’s second message?”

Again, Juliet’s video feed filled with Murphy’s craggy visage, and she said, “Damn it, kid. Call me. Do not skip town without seeing me! I’ve done some poking around, and that damn guy, the one who brought your implants? Paul Vallegos? That fucker doesn’t exist, Juliet. I mean, I know that’s not the craziest thing in the world we live in, but I’m just getting a really bad tickle in the back of my belly, you know? Something’s not right.”

“Angel, direct the cab to Murphy’s place, and call up Rachel on our encrypted line—voice only.” She glanced at the cab’s instrument cluster and switched to subvocalizations, “I’m going to be lying a lot right now, don’t get alarmed.”

“I won’t,” Angel replied, and Juliet felt the cab shift lanes, moving into a turn lane.

The call tone sounded four times before, to her relief, Rachel answered, “January?”

“Yes, Rachel. Are you able to speak?”

“Yes! I’ve had some very troubling reports. We have other operatives in Grave; the word was that you’d been killed!”

“Didn’t you receive my message a couple of days ago?”

“Yes, but, well, this is embarrassing, but the committee ruled that our other plants, in place far longer than you, had the most current sit-rep.”

“Well, they were wrong. Rachel, I have a lot of valuable information for you. I have compromising intel on some top Grave R&D executives as well as the identity of a rival corp’s plant in the Grave watchdog program. With this information, you should be able to read Grave’s research details like an open book.”

“That’s wonderful, January!”

“There’s just one thing, Rachel. I’ve been risking my neck, nearly got killed, as you apparently heard, and I haven’t seen a dime past the twenty-five k you gave me to get hired. I’ve made it the full month and given you quite a lot of intel already. How about a show of good faith? Pay me for what I’ve already done, and when I see that deposit, I’ll send you this new intel, and you can determine if I deserve a further bonus.”

“That’s . . . doable, January. Are you ready for extraction?”

“No, I’m in a secure location. When I’ve gotten the first payment, I’ll contact you for a safe location to come in for a debriefing. Does that sound okay?”

“You sound like you don’t trust us.”

“It's just that, well, Rachel, I’ve been double-crossed a lot on this job. I’m feeling paranoid. Work with me here, please.” Juliet tried to put a smile into her voice, and it seemed like it worked because Rachel chuckled.

“Oh, I can imagine. All right. All right, we can do this. Watch your bit vault for a transfer. I hope you’ll get right back to us when it comes through.”

“Thank you for understanding, Rachel.”

“Speak to you soon,” Rachel said, and then the secure line was cut.

Juliet rubbed her arm, wondering what was lurking under her skin. Angel spoke up, interrupting her rapidly darkening thoughts, “If Rachel thinks you’re still friendly and working for her, there’s less chance she’ll utilize whatever device she’s planted in your arm. That’s what you’re hoping?”

“Exactly. Let me know if the transfer comes, though—that’ll be a good sign if we’re burned totally or not.” Juliet pressed the side of her head against the dark glass of the cab’s window and watched as it wended its way north and east through the ever-decreasing traffic away from downtown and toward Murphy’s building. She was so tired of not knowing who to trust.

At that moment, Juliet desperately wanted a friend to vent to, and she knew Angel would listen, but it wasn’t the same, somehow. She wanted to call Felix, but he wouldn’t have the first clue about how to listen to her current problems. Juliet was not the same person he’d been friends with. She could try to call Honey, but that brought its own problems—one way or another, she was about to bail out of town, and did she want to face her? Did she want to hear her objections? “Shit,” she said, “is Honey even in town? Angel, did she ever message me about leaving for Luna?”

“No, Juliet. She’d messaged you, saying she was considering it, and you responded to be cautious.”

“Right . . .”

“Juliet! You just received a transfer of 150,000 Sol-bits.”

“Oh, shit! Really?”

“Yes, and we’ll be arriving at Doctor Murphy’s building in three minutes. Do you want to message Rachel?”

“No, not yet,” Juliet subvocalized. “I’m going to give her the intel I promised, but it’ll be after the GARD servers are gone, and it’ll be via a secure message. I want to see what Murphy finds out about this implant, anyway. You and I will not walk into another trap.”