CD & EA 1.17 - Dreamers

Another installment!

I have a Victor chapter coming in a few hours as well!

-Plum

Juliet sat in the back of an open-top four-by-four that apparently belonged to Pit. It was olive green, and Juliet thought it might have been an actual relic from an ancient military. It sounded like it was a hundred years old, the way it roared and revved in the low gears. She could smell the exhaust, and after they’d driven for five minutes or so, she turned to Honey, who sat with her in the back seat, and asked, “Does this thing run on fucking petroleum?”

“Bio-diesel!” she shouted over the noise of the engine. “Pit’s a weird asshole when it comes to vehicles and old tech. You saw his sawed-off shotgun, right? That thing shoots old-school buckshot.”

“Hey!” Pit hollered over his shoulder, prompting Mags to scowl at him and plug an ear, “I’m not weird! I just appreciate perfected tech!”

Honey snorted and drummed her fingers on the hilt of the sword she held, scabbard resting on the floorboard between her and Juliet. “I guess I can’t argue.” She eyed the hilt meaningfully and winked at Juliet.

“Is that a, uh, monoblade?”

“Hah, nah. I wish I could afford one, but they’re ultra-pricey—you know only a couple of corps have the tech to make those? Besides, if you don’t know what you’re doing with a monoblade, you’re likely to cut off your own hand or leg.” She pulled on the hilt, revealing a few inches of gleaming blue metal with a razor-sharp edge. “This beauty is hardened ceramic with a nano-carbon weave for flexibility.”

“That’s not metal?” Juliet asked, revising her earlier assessment.

“Nope. Sharp as fuck, but no monoblade.”

Juliet saw that Pit and Mags were both bopping their heads, and she figured they were sharing a tune between them, so she leaned closer to Honey and asked, in a low voice, “Was he serious back in the bar? We’re not going in to kill all these dreamers, are we?”

“Nah,” Honey scoffed, “He’s just gung-ho. You know, blowing hot air. If someone threatens us or gets crazy, he’ll off ‘em, though. Don’t you worry; you’re here for the data retrieval. Leave the dirty work to us.”

“Well, yeah, but I’m just not . . . I’m not cool with us going all murdery. I don’t want to be part of any ‘dirty work.’” Juliet winced, afraid she’d trigger an outburst from the other woman, but Honey smiled and patted Juliet’s knee.

“You’re good, Juliet. Seriously, don’t worry—we’re not psychos.”

“Cool,” Juliet said, smiling and breathing a deep, relieved sigh. She glanced at Honey again, admiring how her chocolate skin glowed in the last rays of the sunset as they rumbled southward toward the Phoenix ABZ. “Hey, the last team I worked with was four people. Is it just a coincidence, or is that like an operator . . . thing?”

“Hah,” Honey laughed, “No, there aren't rules about how many operators need to do a job. I’d say most teams are at least four, though. It’s all an equation of having the right talents without spreading the payday too thin. You feel me?”

“Yeah, I get it,” Juliet smiled, remembering how Mark used to say, “you feel me?” all the time. The roads were growing more and more rough with large potholes and all sorts of debris, making progress slow. Juliet saw that none of the storefronts they drove by looked occupied, and as she looked more closely, she noticed that the powerlines were often hanging loose from the poles or missing altogether.

They still passed other vehicles cruising by slowly from time to time, and Juliet saw how Honey and Mags grew tense, staring at those vehicles until they were past and their taillights faded away. It was dark out there, but Pit’s rig was equipped with big floodlights on the front bar in addition to the headlights, and he switched them on once they were beyond the last vestiges of city infrastructure.

“The dreamers are in an old apartment building a few miles further on,” Honey said after a while. “We’ll park a little ways off and work our way in. There’s no law out here, Juliet, so don’t go pulling any punches if you get separated or threatened, okay?”

“Gotcha,” Juliet said, scanning the dark buildings around them. Most of the structures had boarded-up doors and windows and were covered with tags in every color of paint imaginable. They even drove by a big old box store with an enormous dragon painted on the front of it in neon glow-paint. Its scales undulated with the vehicle's lights, shimmering green and gold as they drove by. “That’s kinda pretty . . .” she said softly, watching the dragon fade away behind them.

“Some of the gangs out here are creative, I guess,” Honey said, smirking. Before Juliet could respond, Pit pulled his old, converted jeep over to the side of the road next to an abandoned fast-food restaurant. He and Mags jumped out as soon as the engine sputtered into silence, and then Juliet followed Honey’s lead, climbing out over the rear fender.

Pit walked around to the back of the vehicle and lifted down a beat-up metal case about eighteen inches square, and set it on the ground. His eyes flickered as he worked with his AUI, and then the box clicked, the sides fell flat, and a robotic spider about the size of a cat whirred to life and stepped out. Juliet backed up a few steps and watched as the spider began to patrol the jeep, an eight-inch, multi-barreled turret on its back scanning the shadows.

“Pit, you think someone’s going to try to steal this thing?” Mags laughed.

“Of course, they would! Arthur’ll keep ‘em back, though,” Pit replied, smiling like a proud father at the robot.

“Come on, dears,” Honey called from the old, debris-strewn sidewalk. “Target’s just up the next block.”

Juliet hurried after her, and she could hear Mags and Pit moving off to keep pace from the sides. Honey walked like a gymnast, agile and quick and leaning forward, her sword, still in its sheath, held at her side. Juliet touched her pistol grip through her vest, scanning the darkness with her retinal implants, noting several figures Angel highlighted, moving through the cluttered alleys.

“There are people out there,” she hissed to Honey.

“Yeah, scavs or junkies. Probably a few dreamers that ran out of gear and are digging around for shit to sell. They won’t fuck with us.” A chain-link fence stood between them and the abandoned apartment building ahead, and Honey rushed to it, jumping and vaulting it with one hand, never letting go of her sword with the other. She landed like a cat on the other side.

Thankfully, Mags hit the fence next, off to Juliet’s right, and she climbed it like a bear, kicking and shaking the links the whole while. She dropped to the other side with a thud and a grunt. Juliet, heartened by her lack of grace, hurried to the fence, jumped to grab the top with both hands, then scrambled up it. She was thankful for her thick clothing and vest when she rolled over the rough, jagged top. Dropping down the other side, still holding the top of the fence, she managed to land with less noise than Mags.

Honey didn’t wait for Pit, and Juliet didn’t want to get left standing around, so she followed her to the shadows at the base of the building. The doors and windows that Juliet could see were all boarded with plywood. Honey was undeterred, though, walking up to a nearby door and, with a tool Juliet couldn’t quite make out, cut a notch in the wood for herself to grip, then she yanked on it, pulling it away from the doorframe. Nails screeched, and the wood cracked, but she yanked it aside, clearing a path for Mags.

The bigger woman knelt by the old fire door, and suddenly a torch flared to life, and Juliet recognized the flare of an oxy-torch as she cut away the old metal door latch. “Isn’t there a way in already?” Juliet asked.

“Huh?” Honey asked.

“I mean, how do the dreamers get in?”

“Well, we’d rather avoid as many of them as possible. Never know what kind of booby traps those creepy assholes might leave around,” Mags said, straightening up and yanking the old door open.

A scrape of gravel alarmed Juliet, and she whirled, only to see Pit standing behind her, his sawed-off shotgun in hand. He nodded to her and softly said, “I’ll bring up the rear. Follow Mags and Honey.” He nodded to the door, and when Juliet looked, she realized the two women had already gone through.

She hurried after them and found herself in a dark, foul-smelling hallway lined with apartment doors. Mags stood nearby, a fat, semi-automatic pistol in her hand, but Honey wasn’t in sight. “Where’s Honey?” Juliet hissed, suddenly feeling like hostile people lurked in every shadow, listening behind every door.

“Scouting. She’s fast and quiet if you haven’t noticed.”

“Right,” Juliet said, moving to the wall opposite Mags and watching down the long hallway past the rotting boxes, piles of old clothing, and general refuse that littered the soiled industrial carpeting. She saw the fourth door on the right was ajar and assumed that was where Honey had gone. “How does she know what doors to skip?” she whispered.

“Active scanner—can pick up electrical signals, even tiny ones like from a battery.” While she spoke, Juliet saw Honey ghost out of the open door and dart down the hallway, pausing briefly by each door. She somehow popped open another door near the end of the hallway, then two minutes later, she reappeared only to slip out of view around the corner near the far end.

“Stairs down there,” Mags said. “Let’s move up.”

Juliet nodded and followed as Mags lumbered down the hallway, apparently not concerned about stealth. When they’d turned the corner and approached the heavy fire door that led to the stairwell, Honey’s voice came through the team channel, “First floor’s done. Come up the stairs—I’m starting on two.”

“Told ya,” Mags said with a smirk. Her black-tinted visor flashed with red light as she reached out and pulled open the door, and Juliet wondered if she could see infrared or something. They climbed up the stairwell to level two, and Juliet saw her first dreamer, at least for that night.

A man lay on the second-floor landing, propped with his head and shoulders jammed into the corner opposite the stairs. He was wearing nothing but soiled white underwear with an old-school VR visor on his face and an autoinjector clutched in his left hand, his knuckles white from the force of his grip. Mags ignored the man, but Juliet couldn’t help staring as they passed by.

He twitched occasionally; otherwise, Juliet might have thought him a corpse. His flesh was pale and looked clammy like it was moist. And, as she crept past him to the door that Mags now held open, Juliet could hear the faintest of whispers coming from his trembling lips—snatches of phrases like “Wait for me " or “There, my love!” uttered in breathy, barely audible grunts.

“Come on,” Mags hissed, and Juliet hurried through the door. She glanced back over her shoulder but didn’t see any sign of Pit.

“Where’s Pit?” she whispered as Mags leaned against the wall, looking down the long hallway to track Honey’s progress through the second-floor apartments.

“He’s around. Don’t worry about Pit.”

“I . . .” Juliet was about to say she wasn’t worried, but then Honey interrupted her.

“Bring Juliet to two-seventeen.”

“C’mon,” Mags said and started trudging down the hallway. Juliet followed, watching the numbers of the apartments on the left side as they passed by, silently uttering the numbers, “207, 209, 211 . . .” then a crash sounded behind her. Mags whirled, her huge handgun outstretched, passing right in front of Juliet’s face so she saw down the dark, wide barrel. Then, when it was just to the right of her head, it erupted like an explosion. Juliet’s auditory implants squelched the sound, but not quite fast enough, and for a moment, her ears rang and buzzed with the feedback.

“What the fuck!” she yelled before she could think of another reaction and rolled to the left to look at what Mags had shot. A young woman was sliding down the doorjamb of apartment 210, a poker-chip-sized bloody hole in the center of her forehead and a splatter of fleshy matter and blood all over the wall behind her. She was dressed in a dirty yellow nightgown, and Juliet was about to scream and lash out at Mags when Angel highlighted the syringe in her left hand and the vibro-razor in her right.

“She was going for you,” Mags said. Then, without another word, she turned and kept walking.

Juliet stared at the dead girl for a minute, some details coming clear that her mind had glossed over at first. She was skeletally thin, the flesh of her arms and legs pocked with sores, and as her racing heart began to settle, Juliet saw that she hadn’t been as young as she thought. “Fuck me,” she hissed, then stood up, leaning against the wall, and started after Mags again.

“Here,” Mags said, stopping in front of a door, and Juliet hurried up to her. Honey poked her head out, looked down the hall to the dead girl, and motioned for Juliet to follow her.

“Be more careful where you point that cannon,” Juliet said as she walked past Mags.

“What?” the woman said, frowning.

“When you turned, you put that barrel right in my eye. Be more careful.” Juliet walked into the ruined apartment, and the big woman just grunted, but Juliet thought she saw a wry grin forming on her lips. “What is it, Honey?” Juliet asked, and then the stench in the apartment hit her, and she had to hold her shirt sleeve up to her mouth and nose. “Fucking hell!”

“Yeah, it stinks. They mostly shit and piss in the bathrooms, but there’s no water,” Honey said from just beyond the short entry. A tiny kitchen was off to Juliet’s right, but she moved forward to Honey and followed her through the little dining and family area where two dreamers lay, oblivious. “In the bedroom. There’s a dreamer with a locked case. See if you can pop it.”

“Oh, all right.” Juliet walked to the doorway that opened into the apartment's only bedroom, and sure enough, another dreamer lay in the middle of the ruined carpet with a plasteel briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. A datapad blinked on the front of the case, and Juliet saw a data port in the bottom corner. “Angel,” she subvocalized, “can you do this wirelessly, or do I need to attach my cable?”

“That security case doesn’t have any wireless access, Juliet.”

“Of course,” Juliet said, creeping over the carpet, trying not to step in still-wet spots, and holding one elbow over her nose. The dreamer was dressed in a torn, horribly stained blue suit that was much too big for his skeletal frame. His eyes were closed, but she could see them darting behind the eyelids, with little flashes of light betraying the heavy activity of his implants. Leaning toward him, she noticed a wire running from the case to an unorthodox data port on the underside of his jaw.

Juliet slowly inched closer, took a deep breath, then reached with her right hand to pull her data cable free from its housing. Ever so slowly, she leaned in and clicked it into the jack on the case. Static briefly flashed on the display, and then Angel said, “I should be able to open this case, but it will take me a minute.”

Juliet turned and held up a finger to Honey, trying to indicate that she needed a minute, then she squatted near the dreamer’s case, trying to get more comfortable without making any noise. His chest rose and fell rapidly, and Juliet could see his fingers twitching, completing some imaginary task in his false reality.

Angel startled her by saying, “I nearly have it, but Juliet, this case is emitting a powerful, encrypted, wireless signal.”

“What does that mean?”

“I believe it’s broadcasting this dreamer’s experience, perhaps to other dreamers nearby.”

“They’re linked? Like they’re playing a multi-player game or something?”

“I’ve no way of telling,” Angel said, and then the clasp on the case clicked open. The dreamer grunted but didn’t move, and Juliet hastily pulled her data cable free, letting it spool back into her arm. Honey had come up behind her and gently nudged her aside. With her left hand still holding her scabbard, she squatted and opened the case with her right hand, revealing a black, triangular data deck, its built-in display flashing with dancing lights, clearly running a program.

“This is it,” Honey said into the team channel, and Juliet realized she was subvocalizing.

“Angel, you can send my subvocalizations to the team?”

“Yes. I just synthesize your voice.”

“Cool.”

“Juliet,” Honey’s voice said in her ear, “You need to get into this deck. Hijack this program, and download it to the net address I’m sending you—unencrypted.”

“Why didn’t you explain this earlier?” Juliet asked, still subvocalizing.

“I wasn’t sure we’d find it, hon.”

“Right,” Juliet said, and Angel did a fantastic job conveying her sarcasm. “Angel, what do I do?”

“The deck should have a data port on the rear side.” Juliet wished she had a mask or something to block out the smells of the apartment as she knelt and, with two hands, gingerly lifted the deck out of the foam lining of the once-locked case. As she lifted it free, she saw the cable that ran into the side of the case was already plugged into the back of it. As she twisted it around, though, her eyes fell upon four ports.

“Which one?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Angel replied, and Juliet put the deck face-down into the case so she could pull out her data cable and plug it into one of the jacks. “Heavy ICE on this case, Juliet. This will take me some time. My algorithms and cracking daemons are stronger, don’t worry—nothing will come through to you.”

“You have daemons?”

“Yes, how do you think I’ve been breaching the security of the devices we’ve encountered?”

“Well, I mean, I thought you were using exploits.”

“Yes, that’s true. I’ve only had to employ my daemons a handful of times. Each time, I’ve learned a few new tricks. Practice has made me a better hacker than my designers intended. I look forward to continuing the experience.”

Juliet felt droplets of sweat forming on her brow, and one of them dripped down her nose. Suddenly she became aware that she was feeling very hot, and she subvocalized, “Angel are you overclocking the new data port?”

“No, Juliet, but I’m running it at one hundred percent for the first time. The co-processors generate a lot of heat, but they’re housed near your carotid arteries and are cooled by your blood.”

“My blood cools them? Jesus, how hot do they get to be cooled by blood?”

“The default setting will not damage your tissue, Juliet. I’m sorry you’re feeling warmer, though.” Suddenly Juliet’s vest began to vibrate as the Angel cranked up the cooling feature, and she felt some relief along her spine and chest.

“How much longer?” Honey asked in the group channel.

“Angel?” Juliet asked.

“Between ten minutes and two hours.”

“Ugh,” Juliet said and spooled out the rest of her cable so she could stand up straight. Then, she subvocalized, “A few minutes or a couple of hours. Depends on our luck.”

“Can’t you just take the case?” Mags said into the channel

“No!” Honey hissed, this time speaking aloud. “The client said this program has to be running in order to hijack it. Does that make sense, Juliet?”

“It makes sense, Juliet,” Angel said. “Once I’m done cracking the security on this deck, I’ll be able to copy the program in progress from the active memory. If it’s stopped, I’ll have to break the encryption on the program, and it could be much tougher, nearly impossible.” Juliet didn’t feel like repeating all that subvocally so that Angel could then repeat it again, so she looked at Honey and nodded, giving her a thumbs up.

“It's the way we gotta do it. Pit, how’s the perimeter?” Honey asked.

“Kinda quiet and weird. I’ve counted around fifty of these fuckin’ weirdos so far, but they all seem to be jacked in . . . none of ‘em even blinked when Mags shot the creeper.”

“Right, keep your eyes peeled. Hopefully, Juliet gets lucky with this thing.”

Juliet nodded and stood there, in the middle of the empty bedroom, on a stained carpet, breathing through her shirt sleeve as she waited for Angel to work. Her back started to ache after five minutes, and she slowly took turns lifting and bending each knee to pass the time and try to keep blood flowing through her body.

“Don’t you have to, like, work your hacks?” Honey whispered after a while, coming close so Juliet could hear her.

“I have a program running that’s sort of automated. I can see what’s happening in my AUI.” Juliet hissed back.

“Right,” Honey whispered, nodding. She turned and paced out of the room, and then Juliet heard, in her implant, “I’m going to do a sweep. Mags is nearby, Juliet.”

Juliet sighed, suddenly feeling hot, thirsty, hungry, and uncomfortable. She was tempted to have Angel load up a vid or a game on her AUI, but she figured that wouldn’t be very professional or smart, considering one hostile denizen of that place had already tried to attack her. She continued to focus on trying to keep comfortable, standing on one leg and then the other, performing knee bends, and stretching her non-tethered arm over her head and behind her back.

Ten minutes stretched into fifteen, stretched into thirty, and Juliet was starting to fear they’d be stuck there until Angel’s worst-case estimate when her PAI suddenly spoke up with a believably excited tone, “I’m in, Juliet!”

“Fuck yes!” she breathed, then squatted down to turn the deck on its side so she could see the screen. “Can you see the program?”

“Yes, of course. I’m starting to capture it as it runs—building a clone on the deck. I’ll send it to the address specified.”

Juliet thought about it for a minute, then she subvocalized, “Angel can you store a copy of it, too?”

“It’s going to be a very large file. I could send a copy to your data vault on the net.”

“Would anyone know you’ve done that?”

“Only if I sent it directly at the same time I sent the one for the client—I wouldn’t do that.”

“Well, do it. Send the client copy first.” Juliet didn’t know why she wanted to take a copy of the dreamer program. Something felt strange about this whole situation, though, and she thought she needed to consider all the angles. She figured she could have Angel spend some time analyzing the program later; if nothing came of it, she could always delete it.

“I finished cloning the program, Juliet—sending the client copy now.”

“Guys,” Juliet subvocalized, “I’m in and have the program file. Sending it to the client address.”

“Fuck yes!” Pit said, and Juliet could hear his voice echoing down the hallway. He’d yelled his response.

“Done?” she asked Angel, used to the PAI finishing everything quickly.

“The file is very large—nearly.” Juliet idly tapped her fingers on her knees as she squatted near the data deck and waited. Thirty seconds later, Angel said, “It’s sent. I’m working on your copy now.”

A few seconds passed, and then Angel said, “Juliet, while I had the net connection open, another party opened a connection and sent a signal to the cube. It’s from a Vykertech corporate address. It seems to be . . . they’ve shut down the dreamer program.”

“That’s weird,” Juliet said, and then the dreamer’s eyes snapped open, brightly flaring with roiling, luminous, worm-like blue tendrils, and he snarled, baring his teeth. “Fuck!” Juliet said, and then the dreamer lunged toward her, wrapping maniacally strong fingers around her ankle before she could step away—she lurched and fell back onto her butt, her hand sinking into a wet spot on the carpet.

Gunshots rang out around her, and then Pit screamed into the group comms, “They’re all fucking waking up! They’re going nuts!”

“Juliet!” Honey said into the comms, “Are you done? Get out to the hallway if you can!”