Cyber Dreams 2.39 - Chroma Tower

Things are ramping up! Let me know what you think :)

-Plum

Juliet stepped out of her cab in the massive parking structure attached to Chroma Tower. Juliet had seen the tower before, marveling at the color-shifting mirrored panels that stretched from the ground into the clouds near its top; she just hadn’t known what it was called back then. That afternoon, as they drove toward the tall, shimmering building, the moniker made perfect sense.  The tower was home, according to Angel, to more than a hundred thousand people, and it wasn’t cheap.

The building was a full residential arcology, not a corpo tower with budget levels for their employees. No, the people living in Chroma Tower were successful by corporate metrics, enough so that they could afford a private place away from their employer’s property, slightly out from under their corporate thumb. In that regard, Chroma Tower wasn’t unlike the arcology where “Lydia” had rented a place, just a few steps up in average quality.

“Juliet, I just received a message from Dr. Murphy.”

“Is it long?”

“It’s a video file and seems to be rather lengthy.”

“Save it for later, please. Where are the elevators?” Juliet clutched her briefcase and strode up the white-striped pedestrian path through the garage, wondering why she hadn’t insisted the cab take her further in.

“Not far. Just around the next bend.”

“You’re spoofing my ID pings?”

“Yes, as far as the cameras and scanners in this building know, you are Angela Chaudhry.” A long, black sedan’s tires squealed on the polished concrete as it wound around the corner behind her, and Juliet reflexively reached into her jacket toward the grip of her needler, but it kept driving, and she forced herself to relax as she hurried toward the long bank of elevators. A big vid wall near the elevators displayed a scrolling message over the image of an idyllic, green mountain meadow, “Welcome Home! Elevator Bank Seven C is Operational.”

Several people were gathered in the area, talking, departing, or waiting for a ride up. Juliet brushed past them and selected the call button, standing off to the side while she waited. When the bell chimed, and one of the sets of doors opened, she stepped inside and trusted Angel to select Chaudhry’s floor—284.

A young woman followed her in, wearing bright exercise clothes and high-end running shoes. She stared through her pink irises into space, clearly preoccupied with an app or vid. Juliet stood quietly in the corner and was glad when the girl stepped off at floor seventy without sparing her a second glance.

“We’ve passed two security scans, Juliet,” Angel announced out of the blue.

“Really?”

“Yes, the elevator wouldn’t operate without a guest code or a successful retinal scan. The building has accepted that you are Angela Chaudhry.”

“Doesn’t it think it’s strange to see us when she’s already home? Shit, I hope she’s home . . .”

“The building has a great many residents and guests who come and go at all hours. The residential AI charges an additional fee to have it track your location, and most residents likely opt out of such a service; they come to live here to avoid having their company watch their every move, after all.”

“Lucky me,” Juliet breathed. No one else entered her car on the way up, and soon she was striding, attempting to look confident, toward Chaudhry’s apartment. The hallways were covered with relatively high-end gray carpeting, and tasteful art hung here and there. Faux skylights provided plenty of illumination, and Juliet had to admit it seemed like a nice place to live.

“It’s the next door on the left.”

“Okay, start listening; see if you can figure out where she might be in the apartment.” Juliet’s audio feed suddenly ramped up, and the sounds of the building grew a bit uncomfortable. She heard loud fan blades, whirring water in the pipes, the crunch of her platforms in the carpet pile, and, worst of all, her own body—heartbeat, breathing, gurgling. “Please filter some of those noises, Angel.”

Suddenly she was bathed in blessed quiet again as Angel dialed back the sounds she’d determined weren’t Chaudhry. Juliet looked at the door as she approached and saw it was equipped with a camera and a smart handle; Chaudhry could look out and see the hallway, but, more importantly, the door would be able to tell if Juliet had Chaudhry’s iris and palm prints. She paused there, in the hallway, back to the wall, looking up and down the empty corridor while she waited for Angel to try to gather intel.

“Juliet, try looking at the wall behind you,” Angel said as her visual spectrum changed to the infrared. Juliet moved away front he wall and nonchalantly ran her gaze over the wall, but she didn’t see anything other than the long gray expanse of plaster. Though, near the door, she saw some yellow and orange signatures near the data panel.

“I’m afraid this apartment is quite well built. I’m not picking up any biological sounds from within, and, as you can see, it’s sufficiently insulated to obscure heat signatures.”

“Guess we’re going to have to try to get lucky. Start up the net jammer on the deck,” Juliet said, walking toward the door. She’d re-enabled the deck’s local wireless so Angel could interface with it. Without its battery pack, Juliet knew she couldn’t run the jamming field for more than twenty minutes or so. Still, she figured that should be plenty to keep Chaudhry from calling for help if she caught sight of Juliet too soon.

She looked into the door’s camera, grasped the handle, and felt the nearly imperceptible click as it unlocked. “Any alarms?” she subvocalized.

“Nothing evident.” As Angel replied, Juliet carefully depressed the door handle and opened the door. Rather than stand in the hallway peering through a crack in the door, putting on a show for the tower AI, Juliet carefully and quickly stepped through the opening onto plush carpeting. Juliet silently thanked the executive for splurging on the soft, quiet flooring, then scanned left to right. She was in a foyer of sorts with a wall before her and an opening on either side. To the right, she could glimpse a hallway leading away; to the left, she saw some living room furniture and part of a kitchen.

A low table sat against the wall directly before her, several artsy pieces of pottery sat atop it, and a picture of a native American on a horse hung on the wall above it. Juliet delicately closed the door behind herself, ever-so-gently letting go of the handle. She reached into her jacket, pulled out her needler, and quickly moved to the wall, peering around the corner to the left.

She jerked her head back when she saw a woman with long black hair, wearing silky, mint-green pajamas, lying on the couch, staring into space. “That’s Chaudhry,” Angel helpfully said.

“Yeah, thanks, Detective,” Juliet subvocalized. “She’s on the net or something. The jammer doesn’t reach that far?”

“No, she’s outside its range by two or three meters.”

“Okay, help me get this shot perfect,” Juliet said, then she leaned around the wall again, pointed her needler at Chaudhry, so the crosshairs lined up on her silk-covered hip, and then she gently squeezed the trigger. The pistol was surprisingly quiet and gentle—it sounded more like a hissing *click* than a bullet going off. She knew the barrel was modded to reduce noise and that the botu-rounds were low velocity, but she’d expected more noise, especially after firing the Taipan so many times.

Her shot was perfect, and she didn’t think Angel had done anything more than provide the crosshairs. Juliet saw a dark stain spread on Chaudhry’s hip, heard her yelp briefly, and then fall very still. Before rushing over to her, Juliet subvocalized, “Any sounds I should worry about? She lived alone, right?”

“Yes, according to her personnel file, but she could have a visitor. Not that I hear any sign of one.”

Juliet crept around the corner, panning left and right with the needler, scanning the living room and kitchen area, and almost whistled at how fancy everything was. Angela Chaudhry must make good money, indeed—she had a kitchen larger than Juliet’s apartment in the Grave Tower, and it was very well appointed with high-end appliances, white marble counters, and a sleek, designer dining room table.

The living room was plush with two sofas, a gas fire pit, and a view of the Phoenix skyline that had to have doubled her rent. More importantly, Juliet didn’t see any other people. She knew the paralytic agent was supposed to last up to an hour, but she didn’t know if Chaudhry had any sort of nanites that might shorten that duration. That said, she hurried over to the woman and, gripping her knee and shoulder, turned her onto her side so she faced the back of the couch.

Keeping herself out of Chaudhry’s line of sight, Juliet peeled back her synth-skin and plugged her data cable into her port. “Angel, after you defeat her PAI, turn off her implants.” Juliet held her needler trained on Chaudhry’s rump and shifted so she could keep an eye on the hallway leading further into the apartment.

“This might take me a few minutes. Chaudhry’s PAI is an Aurora Corporation, Jessica model 42A.”

“High-end?” Juliet guessed.

“Quite.” Juliet held her gun steady, kept alert, and, despite the cramp she felt in her lower back, didn’t cave in to the discomfort and shift her position. She upped the gain on her audio implants, listening to the little noises in the apartment, hoping she wouldn’t note anything unusual. Minutes ticked by, and Juliet knew Angel was waging war with Chaudhry’s PAI. She looked at the woman’s limp hands and cursed herself for forgetting to buy shrink bands. She’d have to find something in the apartment to tie her up . . .

“I’m in,” Angel said, interrupting her thoughts. “Auditory, retinal, and prosthetic leg implants are disabled. The only other implant her PAI controls is an artificial heart, and she will die if I disable it.”

“Right, leave it alone,” Juliet subvocalized. Then, knowing Chaudhry was paralyzed, blind, and deaf, she stood up and quietly moved over the plush carpeting to the hallway. She found two bedrooms, one set up like an office and the other clearly Chaudhry’s; the bed was messed up on one side, and there was no evidence of anyone else in the place. Juliet rifled through her dresser until she found some leggings she could use as ropes to bind her hostage’s wrists and ankles.

“I’ll plug you back in now, and we can see what we can find out from her stored messages. I imagine one of Vance’s peers should have a clue what’s going on with GARD.”

“Yes! I’ll dig through her messages and saved files.” Angel sounded enthusiastic, and Juliet chuckled as she plugged her back in.

“Be careful, though, Angel. We don’t want to hurt her; I don’t know that she’s as dirty as Vance.” Part of Juliet pitied the woman; she had to be terrified, lying insensate like that. Still, Juliet hadn’t started this battle. She wasn’t the one sending kill squads out—that was Grave, and Chaudhry was guilty by association as far as she was concerned.

While she waited for Angel, she glanced at her AUI, saw it was just a bit after noon, and tried to breathe deep, calming breaths. Had she really just broken into a high-ranking corpo exec’s home and paralyzed her? “Angel, check her itinerary—does she have anyone coming over, or is she expected to be anywhere soon?”

“Nothing today. Juliet, I found a message chain you might find interesting.”

“Can you please summarize?”

“Yes, GARD is under investigation as of two weeks ago by Grave Quality Control. They’ve sent multiple requests to Vance for the files on the GIPEL, but he’s been stalling for time. It seems Chaudhry was helping him to do so; a message chain between them indicates that she owed him a favor.”

“Anything about Gordon?”

“Yes, he frequently visited the GARD sublevel and has had several face-to-face meetings with Chaudhry, Vance, and some of the other researchers on staff. He seems to be interfering with the investigation into Vance and his program. Juliet, listen to this one!” As Angel spoke, a recording of a voice conversation between Vance and Chaudhry began to play:

**Begin Record**

“What?” Vance’s voice asked tersely.

“You’re in deep shit. Did you know it was one of your subjects that was tunneling over to Zi Tower?” Chaudhry sounded amused.

“What?” Vance asked again, this time with a hard edge of stress in his voice.

“That’s right. Joshua Kyle. There’s evidence he and a bunch of his cronies absconded with a trove of stolen data. How’d you manage such a screw-up?”

“You sound pleased, Angela. I hope you know that if I go down, I’ll bring you and about seven other chief executives down with me.”

“I’m not involved in that GIPEL bullshit!” Chaudhry’s tone had shifted from amused to angry.

“Doesn’t matter. You know how many times I helped you clean up messes. Anyway, I’ll get Gordon on this—he owes me plenty. I need to get on a call with him.”

**End Record**

“So she’s dirty too,” Juliet sighed.

“There’s a great deal more. She and her PAI are fond of saving conversations, it seems.”

“Leverage, I guess. Anything more about the GIPEL program?”

“Oh yes. Here’s an encrypted text message log,” Angel replied, and then a chat log appeared in Juliet’s AUI. There were no date or time stamps, but Juliet could infer when this conversation occurred:

**Begin Record**

Vance: Gordon’s almost done with this Garza hiccup, and he says he’ll have no problem cleaning up my GIPEL loose ends, at least the ones still with Grave. Kyle’s already handled, but I’m going to need your data group to help me track down the ones that got out ahead of him.

Chaudhry: That’ll cost you. I want the rights for the A48-C project.

Vance: Are you out of your goddamn mind? That project is almost through quality control! It’s the only thing keeping my head above water!

Chaudhry: If you want help cleaning this mess, I want a big piece of it, at least—fifty percent.

Vance: You’re a cold bitch, you know that? 20%.

Chaudhry: 40.

Vance: Goddammit. Fine! Get your team working on those runners!

**End Record**

“Angel, suddenly, I don’t feel so bad about tying her up like this.”

“She’s certainly not innocent.”

“All right, do you have her login information for the Grave servers?”

“Yes.”

Juliet took another look out the windows at the megatowers and arcologies, not nearly as glorious in the bright sunlight but still something to behold. “Okay, as much as I can’t stand this woman after those logs, I don’t think I could live with myself if we murdered her. Can you set her PAI to come back online sometime tomorrow evening? I figure if we’re not in the wind by then, it won’t matter. Before you finish, though, erase all of her contacts, all of her saved ‘leverage,’ and especially all of her files on anything to do with GARD and their projects. Can you delete anything she has in data vaults?”

“I cannot. Her PAI keeps her data vault keys fully encrypted—without massive external processing power and a lot of time, I won’t be able to crack those.”

“A bummer, but I expected it. Well, let’s hope at least some of the local data we’re nuking wasn’t backed up.”

“All right, give me another minute to set up the daemons.” While Angel worked, Juliet sat and contemplated. Grave was a cesspool of corruption and unethical behaviors. She felt bad about the repercussions of her plan of action when it came to people like Addie, Granado, heck, even White—he was a killer, but he’d had her back.

Still, she couldn’t leave GARD unscathed after all they’d done, and with all they knew—they were eliminating and hunting the GIPEL subjects who’d escaped. They had little hope of finding Juliet after she purged the Lydia Roman identity, but still, she didn’t like the idea of it. Seeing how things were handled by Grave management, she had to re-evaluate Joshua Kyle; it wasn’t a surprise that he’d run and tried to hurt her and Polk. He’d been desperate, and these people had erased him. They’d tried to do the same to her.

“All set, Juliet.”

“Good,” Juliet said, pulling out her data cable, checking her restraints on Chaudhry, and contemplating hitting her with another dose of botu-needles. Curious, she tugged Chaudhry’s pajama bottoms down to look at her hip where her needler rounds had impacted. Two small, bloody dots were the only evidence of the shot—the needles had gone deep. Juliet jerked Angela’s waistband back up with a cruel grin, imagining the pain of those needles buried to the bone. “At least you’ll feel that.”

“Okay, Angel, spoof Chaudhry’s PAI and clear her morning schedule. Send a message as Chaudhry to Gordon. Tell him there’s a problem with Vance and that he needs to come to Chaudhry’s office at 0700. After that, send a message to Vance. Tell him the opposite—there’s a problem with Gordon, and he needs to meet in her office at 0730.”

“Should I send them now?”

“No. Sometime after midnight. I don’t want them trying to get to her before then. Angel, I still have a copy of the dreamer program on my deck, right?”

“You do. Encrypted.”

“Okay, let’s go search around Chaudhry’s office. She’s gotta have a data deck or two lying around.” Juliet left Chaudhry after one more tug at the knots on her restraints, then walked back down the hallway to her home office. She immediately saw a data deck on Chaudhry’s desk, resting on a charging pad. Juliet took off her own deck and set it on the pad to charge, her wireless jammer still active, then she picked up the sleek, silvery cube that belonged to Chaudhry.

It responded to her touch, coming to life, and she chuckled, realizing it thought she was its owner. “Okay, hold on, Angel. It would be ideal if we found another deck. Rich woman like this, she’s gotta have some old ones collecting dust.” Juliet moved around the back of the desk, pulled open the drawers, one by one, and sure enough, in the bottom, larger drawer, she found several older, less powerful decks.

“The black oblong deck with the rounded edges is sufficiently powerful to run the dreamer program,” Angel said as Juliet ran her eyes over them.

“Good. Okay,” Juliet picked up the older deck and set it next to the slightly more modern one, “now we can make sure a couple of dirty corps are at each other’s throats long after we’re gone.”