MONITOR
- 45 -
Parked outside a big lot in the outskirts of Baultriel. We can see it just barely over there, around the corner of this old apartment block and across a street, sitting in the middle of a field of dead grass and bordered by barbed wire fences. Five-story prefab building with bright searchlights, cameras out the ass. I am downing the last of my coffee, and my foot is thudding against the floor of the car, and Rhodes climbs into the Bug Bag after slipping on earphones.
Noss has binoculars. The radio is on but we haven't heard a word in ages. Nobody is speaking. Nobody has spoken in ten minutes.
The sun is so gone from the world in the evening, someplace so deep as the Gutters, that it seems like an endless midnight, broken up only by the streetlamps and neon advertisements too high up to easily pilfer. Scuffed mud and rubble and League trucks out front, and six enormous radiotransmitters on the top of the building.
Noss sits up straight. She spots something through her lenses, and then I see it, too. A white van pulls up out front and parks.
She leans into the car radio and keys the transmitter.
"Thursday, this is Control. Scram."
Then, like she has killed something with only a word, the power in twenty percent of Baultriel goes out, and we are plunged into the dark, and I burst out of the car already sprinting, with the Bug Bag around my shoulder.
Backup power won't be on until the control system realizes there's too little electricity to power the cameras. Two minutes if we're supremely lucky. I cross the street in three great strides and have to slap down my helmet to keep it from flying off. The world disappears into a black smudge but I get to the fence and pull some cutters from my right pocket. Snip. Snip. "Fucking hell," Rhodes says, and I realize quite late that I'm hearing gunshots.
I see the muzzle flashes in the artificial night. Team Seesee is shooting out the cameras on the exterior of the building. Gotta make it look real. More than ten silhouettes storming the front. Snip. Snip. How long now? I force myself through the gap in the fence and then get back to sprinting.
So much screaming and yelling in the building now. I hear the organic 'ploomp' of one of the foam grenades going off, I hear the loud racket of suppressed gunshots blasting open windows and smashing computers and I hear Vasthi screams and I slam myself into the wooden back door so hard it nearly comes off its hinges.
Stairwell. I am greeted by a man in a small ballistic vest and eyeglasses, facing the other way, facing towards the interior. He is slow and surprised and shell-shocked and I manage to swing around to grip my gun in time to shoot a shell at his crotch.
It happens instantly. The rattling ring of a metal container hitting concrete, and the horrifying snap of bone nearly coming in half, and both of his legs from the calf upward are encased in a massive glob of pale material, and his scream overpowers everything. I slam my non-metal fist into his jaw and throw his handgun outside, and he collapses, writhing in a stiff motion. Not got time to cuff him. I start climbing the stairs.
One of the overhead lights is flickering. I load another foam shell in. Rhodes is getting jostled around a lot. Fuck I'm tired. Come on, legs. Exploding with pain all of a sudden. Third floor and there is someone else suddenly and I shoot at her knee point-blank and she flies back upside-down and collides with the concrete and gets stuck there wailing. I sprint up to the roof but the door outside resists me trying to slam it open with my aching shoulder. "Fuck," I say. Locked. I try it and it's locked.
Okay. I brace the Leopardo's stock against my metal shoulder and put the tip of the suppressor up to the doorknob and squeeze the trigger until, in a horrible smoking stinking mess of brutally loud automatic fire, everything falls apart into a slagged mess, and I kick it open.
There are six radiotransmitters silhouetted against the faint ambient light of Baultriel, and I take us over to the closest one. Emergency override box. If we were stupid and brash we'd blow it up but that'd only increase Peacekeeper response time by an extra minute or so, and we're not here for that. "Padlock," I shout, panting, head throbbing.
"I got it," Rhodes wails. "Open me up, I'll picklock it."
No time to waste. "I got it," I assure her, and I shoot the padlock into slag, too.
The box comes open with a whine and puff of chemsmoke and shows off an intricate interior with a thousand little knobs and dials and diagnostics and I don't care. Plugs labeled BUS 14. BUS 15. BUS 16. "Which bus," I ask.
"Doesn't matter," Rhodes says. We go through a brief and harrowing exercise in trying to get her little cybernetic cord to come out of the bag far enough to reach into one of the buses, and it's not enough, so I pull her out and have her stand. Can't have long left before the cams go back on. "Okay."
She puts the delicate nerve-wire from her brain into BUS 14 and her eyes go blank, and she is gone.
-
More gunshots. More foam shells breaking more bones.
More screaming. More broken glass.
Somewhere, far off, there are sirens coming alive.
-
Rhodes lets out a horrible yelp and falls into my arms.
-
Babbling horribly. Sobbing and covering her eyes with her hands. "It hurts," she screams. "Fuck."
"What?"
"It's so much."
"Can I disconnect you?"
She sucks in some tears and shuts her eyes harder. "Yes, yes, go! Fuck!"
I take her out of BUS 14 and stuff her into the Bug Bag and the rooftop lights start to flicker to light definitively. I whip myself around and with the last couple rounds in the Leopardo I shoot a volley at the lone camera watching over the roof, ratatat blasting everything into sharp focus again, and then scramble over toward the nearest ledge.
Noss's car is still parked there. Almost out. Come on, we're almost out. I retrieve something from the biggest pouch in my webbing—a wrapped-up coil of rope made of bungee cord—and start to unfurl it over the lip of the overhang. Too short by a meter but it'll do. I tie it around a bit of metal trussing bordering the concrete lip of the rooftop, wrap the Bug Bag around my back, and rappel.
Don't drop me.
Don't drop me. I lower below the fifth story windows. Shoes bracing poorly on the weird footholds and contours. I go past a window just barely. Heavy. If I actually lose grip it's all over. I hear Rhodes whimpering.
Don't drop me.
My real palm is aching already. Make sure you wear gloves if you're gonna rappel, Nelly. Fuck you. I forgot. Lower, lower, lower. Just low enough that when it gives it won't kill me. Third story. I plant against the bricks and my left shoe slips and I have to crouch sideways to regain grip. I hear more screeching from inside as the lights come on.
Second story.
I hear the sound of the sky imploding into a stratospheric vacuum. In the League's hands, you are never more than one minute away from rescue.
Whistling sears the air and I feel like I am a kid in class again getting caught pulling someone's hair. I reach the bottom floor and my palm is bloody and I land horribly and flat-footed and it aches bad, but I am alive and I have you, Rhodes, I still have you, and I sprint with the last of myself out through the hole in the fence, and across the street, and around the corner, and return to the car, and I collapse in the back, and Noss hits the gas so hard that we lift off the ground by the back wheels.
- 46 -
"Fuck," Rhodes whimpers. I got my arms around her. We're speeding twenty kilometers an hour over the limit. Cop cars pass us in a line of four and Noss slows down and we're lucky enough not to draw attention. "Fuck, there's so much."
I squeeze her tighter. "You're in the back seat of a car," I tell her. "I love you."
"I l-love you," she sobs. She's absentmindedly scratching at her cybernetic.
"It's just the net. It's just cameras. You're still here."
"So much more than cameras," Rhodes says, after a second. We don't have our seatbelts on. Noss and Ceder are shouting at each other and at the radio, but it's measured shouting, and I'm not sure they even perceive that we're here right now.
"But you're right here with me."
"Yeah."
"Just two girls with headaches."
"Ha-ha." But she sounds worse off than me.
I decide to try something stupid. "Do you want to try to find us in the net? Find us on cameras?"
"Why?"
"...Just try to focus on one thing at once, is all I'm thinking."
"Okay." And she grips my hand tight, and it gets covered in my blood. "I'll look."
It's too big. It's all too large to be so tiny in. We are moved by the mountains. But we are here, Rhodes, we are here, we are on some back street somewhere fleeing. The land and seas are infinite but we are not infinitesimal. "Start at the surveil junction," I tell her.
She nods and swallows some spit, eyes closed. "I see it," she whispers.
"What's going on?"
"Dropships. Landed on the grass. Barricades. I think Seesee is barricading."
I wince. "Gunfire?"
"No. Ah. Y-Yes."
They are a decoy. Willing or not. They're stuck there and, by design, no individual member in that team knows anything about the bigger plan. Just make a big show of things, Seesee, and you'll have done your job.
"Can you find where we drove off, Rhodes?"
She squeezes my hand. "Yes," she finally says. "North. Intersection 1450 then 1451. F-Fuck, I feel like I'm a MONITOR core r-right now."
"Can you find us?"
"I," and she squeals softly and crumples into my weight. "I don't know. Samson is messaging Eledo about tomorrow night. A Baldari is screaming into his phone. His power is out. Ade astar pjeto. Albala. Albala. Casto ar gallat e passetto, albala."
I grip her backside hard. "You're here with me, Rhodes. You're in Noss's car."
Her crying turns lucid. "One of Seesee is dead," she says. "They shot her."
Grunting in the front seat. Ceder speaking lowly and readying his rifle; I hear him pull back the bolt. I speak. "Focus. You're in Noss's car."
"I can't find it," she whimpers. "Two dead. Fuck, why aren't they stopping?!"
"You're with me, Rhodes." I kiss her forehead and put my metal hand over her cybernetic.
"It won't shut up! I-It's Salvo Nine! He's spamming the channel with information about the shootings, look at this map, look, Nelly. Look at all the outages. Something is happening." Her spindly hands crawling along my body with no rhyme or reason. She's not here.
"You're still here."
"Ba." I hear her cough and I need to cough too. "O-Okay. I'm here. Please d-don't go."
We barely beat out a yellow light at an intersection and Noss screeches at us. "We're almost there!" she yells. "Can she do the thing?"
I grimace horribly and my head wants to pop. Stop yelling. All of you stop yelling. "Give her a fucking second, please," I ask.
"You don't got long!"
My arms around Rhodes. Shielding her. I'll bite your head off. "Give her a second."
Ceder speaks. "Nelly, arm yourself properly. Somebody will carry her."
I look at him and I also want to bite his head off. But his voice is booming and overpowering and it breaks me down, and I break away from Rhodes, and I do my duty as a soldier.
New magazine. New grenades for my webbing. I have to wipe my palm on my pants because it's bleeding too much.
Rhodes slumps against me, and her voice is a whimper. "I can do this," she says. "Just get me there."
"Okay," I say.
"Just get me there so we can get out."
Drool is coming from her mouth, and her eyes look like she has been making them bleed by squeezing all her eyelids so hard. I stick the new magazine in my gun and set it on the floor, muzzle pointing upward, and grip it tightly to keep it from being jostled. In the cramped interior it takes some doing, but I'm able to sling the Bug Bag around my back with one hand, crammed with new tools. "Final stretch," I tell her.
In short order, having crossed much of Baultriel over the speed limit, passing by buildings enveloped in a hellish darkness, we reach the League Authority & Enforcement Planning Building on 51st and Pillbox.
- 47 -
We park just out front beside many other cars.
It is a dense and severe structure with old stone pillars and ugly bronze letters spelling out its given name, heavily reinforced concrete with black metal siding and steel modillions sharp like knives, right near the center of the Gutters in a niche plot of land where the artificial grass is, somehow, deader than dead, and its thousand camera-eyes sag similarly lifeless as if bowing in prayer for us.
The assault team is already outside and stood in black clothes along the walls without a word, and we get picked up by the fifth squad of team Mini. A couple garbage truck drivers got bribed to divert traffic and it's dark as hell in the street. Three insiders left the fortified blast doors of the front unlocked for Mini and us, and two more insiders have the backup generator room barricaded and are keeping them disabled for now. Noss and I form up near the stone steps up to the entrance with our guns up in the air and Ceder stands further back, and Rhodes is in the arms of some enormous man who has handed off his rifle.
We are just in time, and no earlier or later.
It's starting to rain.
"This is Control," Noss says. Her words cut through the silence. I see some heads turn. Nobody recognizes anybody but everybody knows her voice. "Go."
We storm the building.
This time of day on a random Wednesday has the place packed full of people huddling and chatting about the power outage, and we form up like an arrowhead and Noss shoots a shell and Ceder shoots a shell and I shoot a shell and our footsteps are silent on the tile floors but the screams start ringing out, legs tangled up, arms tangled up, then the third and fourth squads split off into the immediately adjoining rooms and batter down doors and yell for silence, quiet, quiet. A tall and well-dressed human to my left catches one of them, a security guard with a shoddy vest, trying to pull a datapad, and she snatches it away and stuffs it in a Faraday bag around her waist. We are kicking and yelling at everyone we come across. I load another foam shell.
Squads six and seven head up the frontmost stairwell while ours heads down. The halls echo so hard it's impossible to hear any vocal commands but Noss is giving them anyway, curt and short. I hear screaming. I see someone in a raincoat on the stairs and Ceder kicks him into the wall and seals him there with some foam and the ceramic wall cracks from the force. I shoot the wall beside him and screech at him. Noss uses zip ties. We are an assembling line.
We proceed downward.
The first basement level serves as a sort of checkpoint against these kinds of incursions and we see fewer offices and desks and computers and more fortifications, but all the blast doors have already been opened for us and the darkness is to our benefit; bright flashlights cutting through it, shocking, dazzling, incapacitating. I catch one woman trying to run past us to the stairwell in the left leg with a foam shell and she goes to the ground and I have to kick her to see if she's conscious, and she is. "Help," she croaks, but I am too busy loading another shell.
We round the corner towards Processing and Authentication and I look back to see if the person carrying Rhodes is still with us and in that moment I am caught off guard by thunderous, unsuppressed gunfire.
A horrible rattling of a submachine gun yanks my attention forward. A muzzle flash in the darkness. The guy to my left in a black hoodie and surgical mask has a hole in his head. Two others fall. I shoot a foam shell towards the unidentifiable blackness and we sprint forward in a low formation.
Security guard. Got brave. Foam shell covering his chest and paralyzing his arms. I got blood on my shoulder.
No bloodshed in Baultriel. Unless it's ours.
I knock him out with my metal fist and snatch his gun away. When I look back I notice that I have punched his nose clean off.
Someone shouts forward that we have two dead and one wounded but we do not stop.
-
By now maybe squads six and seven have reached the roof and disabled the transmitter, but there's no reason to think so yet. Have to move too quickly for anyone to get an emergency pulse out. Not that the Peacekeepers have it easy right now—there's fires being set, assassinations being pulled off. The martyrs in Seesee are putting up a fight and making a show of things. We are the only silent arm of the operation and the less we dawdle the better we can hide.
Noss brings us forward and Ceder and I form up behind her. We pass through Processing and Authentication and disable a few lab workers in the clean room as they sprint to hide in the bathrooms, and one of the other Neriak in our squad goes to clear the bathrooms proper. "Check the stalls!" I call after her.
"Ba!"
Two others start covering our rear as we finally reach the second basement floor, past another stairwell, and Ceder sets up a tripwire along the topmost step hooked up to some little gadget. We come across one more security guard trying to be a hero. People are unpredictable. He lets off one shot above my head before someone catches him in the chest with a foam shell and I hear bones breaking as he collides with a scanner bollard.
Buried under enough earth to start firing shots to intimidate people. So many shouts. Stay. Put your guns down. Nobody has to get hurt. I have taken to punching whoever's down and my stance is low. Knees hurt like hell from the rappel earlier. Hand covering my handguard in blood. It's too fucking hot in this gear and I want to go home.
Proceed.
Upon reaching the Control Room beside the Server Room we fan out into smaller fireteams at last, leaping on the consoles and finding people huddled up, trying to find a buoy connection to use their datapads. Bunch of unarmed workers here now, with the guards mostly dispatched; I see Ceder shout down one trying to pull a gun and, at last, some people can be simply zip tied without needing to break bones with foam shells. I lose track of most of the squad save for the shapes of their flashlights piercing the dark. Noss locates our insiders and shouts out to keep them from getting targeted, but as far as I can tell nobody has managed to get the Server Room open. Not my job. I'm just scanning between all the consoles.
Scale of this place is staggering. At least fifty people tasked to watch over Baultriel communications every day, and this is just one building with one MONITOR. Ten thousand chat channels and phone calls and cameras being analyzed and then these people in suits with cushy chairs tell the system to bring the hammer down. Headsets and snacks and drinks scattered across the floor. My flashlight catches one guy trying to crawl to the exit and I shell his legs into the carpet, and then I tilt my gun upward to illuminate a sign by the wall closest to the Server Room windows.
EMERGENCY ALERT, it says, just above a red button surrounded by hazard tape.
A woman is sprinting towards it in the dark, nearly tripping over her heels. I have no time.
You push that and your life is over.
No. Our lives are over.
I aim at her head and pull the trigger.
- 48 -
Are you awake, Nelly?
Too long I've been awake.
I was thinking to myself some terrible shit. Like I've done you wrong, or made you wrong somehow. I know I don't normally talk like this.
Why did that spring to mind like that?
I'd like it if you got to sit on some shore someday, somewhere sunny.
What about you?
And when I picture what's best for you, old woman, I don't picture myself. I think I'll be here until I get shot and die. And I know you figure the same for yourself.
I don't want to go without you.
But it doesn't have to be true. These things aren't in stone.
-
Someone has yanked my gun upward.
-
There's nice places. That's all I mean. Don't you want a nice place to live?
I do, Pell. I do. Why couldn't I get us there in time?
No. I guess you... I don't know... what you want. You've been so absent. I've been pushing you too far.
There's no such thing as too far. Why didn't you come back?
I've made you the wrong kind of person. I've made you like me, honey.
It wasn't too late for you and it sure as shit isn't too late
for you.
-
I look and there is a mark in the concrete just above the EMERGENCY ALERT button, and the woman has turned back to me with all the blood drained from her expression, but there is no hole in her head and, despite my best efforts, I have not killed her, and she crumples to the ground and sobs and I put zip ties on her.
"Control!" I scream. "Control, get someone to disable this!"
Noss is on top of a console with her boots planted wide, and I catch only her broad-waisted silhouette as she turns back to me. She huffs out. "Ground comms already got cut! It's fine! We're dark," she says. "Finish clearing!"
I look back down at the human woman I nearly shot. Her makeup is running. Her thin, aged face looks like so many of the worst and best people I have ever known. I don't realize that I haven't taken a breath in a while and finally break and sniffle and lower my gun away from her face. You almost died for nothing at all. I almost killed for nothing at all.
I ought to be done with that kind of thing by now.
Got to do my duty. I finish clearing each row and column of the Control Room alongside Ceder, who has caught up by now and has maybe detected a little of the shock in my expression, and we go along and incapacitate any stragglers. Nobody has much to say to us. I finally spot the tall, broad human carrying Rhodes walk into the room, and Rhodes herself is still panting and crying, though it seems like she's gotten a little bit of a better hold of herself. Noss speaks when she spots them. "Rust," she calls. "Have Crux open the blast doors."
The human tilts his head up and faintly smiles. "Where to, little woman?" he asks Rhodes.
"Any console," Rhodes says. "They should all be good."
I head over to help lower her down into one of the cushioned roller chairs that hasn't gotten knocked over. She's trembling but still present. Not in the camera net right this second. "Focus," I tell her. "We're close now."
"I hope so," she says.
Noss arrives, and then so does Ceder, to loom over us. "We are expecting four Hoplites," Ceder says, raising his voice for the room. "Everybody use EMPs. If you must shoot, aim for the midsection, where they contain batteries. Use the servers as cover—we do not need them. But do not shoot the MONITOR. Do not risk shooting the MONITOR."
"Yessir," I hear most reply.
"Is it shielded from EMP?" I ask.
"Prob'ly," Rhodes mutters. "It's their prized possession." After a little fiddling, she manages to replace the console's power port with a handheld battery we brought along. It comes alive slowly and in parts, and she settles her shaking fingers on the keyboard, hammering on ALT and FUNCT to get to the network settings before it boots up properly.
Some part of me wants desperately to settle in the chair with her, but the squad is already huddling up near the blast door to the Server Room. Some are peeking in through the thick bulletproof glass—the interior is dark as hell, interspersed with server racks forming big obelisks, all quietly turned off in the outage. I give Rhodes a brief little look, and then step over to the group forming up. My knuckle is bleeding. I didn't notice just how much.
"Load," Noss tells us. We all load up with EMP shells. A Hoplite military drone is designed to enforce safety and security in a maximally-effective and maximally-efficient manner. Our drones can support each other tactically in a squad of up to ten individuals, and have training on par with the best Confederate soldier. Put yourselves in trusted hands. Put yourself in TruStar hands.
I don't like robots.
"Opening," Rhodes cries out. The man called 'Rust' stands by her side to shield her from the entrance. She's turned on the lights inside, too—faint overhead emergency lights separate from the power net.
Noss speaks again. "I want three on the left, three on the right, four up the middle. We need a full clear for Crux."
The gigantic heavy door begins to creak, whine, and slide upward, and a plume of cold comes out towards us.
We hear the sounds of battery-powered machinery coming to life within.
Things happen in a blitz. We take fire from one of the Hoplites almost instantly and each group goes for cover at once. It doesn't seem to care about the precious server banks one bit, and a rack gets torn to shreds by some extremely fast-firing gun; Ceder and I group up and fire EMPs on either side of a bit of cover and hear a deafening roar of hard drives being fried. Somehow through the chaos we hear more of their hoppy metal legs darting between cover but still don't see shit, so I load another EMP while running and Noss covers our advance. The group on the right takes more fire and I hear some yelling and screaming, and finally as we go forward I spot one of the Hoplites.
A metal piece of origami shaped like a man, enormous and made of thick slabs of steel, and with its cubic head close to its chest; I bring up my rifle and it spots us and leaps back into cover, but it's already too late. The shell collides with the floor and explodes into a sparkling blue and white light and the screeching of machinery ends.
More. Surrounding us rapidly, by the sound of their heavy footsteps. "Left!" I call, and Ceder swings around and tries to catch it with EMP, but his shot goes wide and hits the back wall, and it's only another shell from someone further back that catches the Hoplite properly. "Two down!"
"Three!" I hear someone else call. "I—"
A guttural scream and ripping flesh.
I turn back to see the Neriak woman who joined us. A different kind of robot, gaunt and lifelike, has shoved its fist through her chest, and she stands there paralyzed, and dying, and then dead.
I try to bring my gun up but the sudden roar left me startled and I realize too late that Ceder and I are getting flanked, and the last Hoplite is upon us. It readies a machine gun and starts shooting and I fire my EMP point blank at its face.
Everything goes wrong all of a sudden. My arm hurts more than anything else has ever hurt.
My metal arm hurts.
-
I'm writhing. It fucking hurts. It hurts and I have bullet holes in me. I am covered in blood. My helmet is on the floor with a dent in it. I look faintly upward and see Ceder bracing against the server rack for support, and there is a hole in his left arm, and a mark in his chest where a bullet hit his vest. But he's all blurry.
Trying to get hold of my gun again. I don't know where it went.
My arm isn't cooperating. My arm is off. My arm hurts so fucking much.
I try to use my real hand to crawl but it's splattered in blood and I realize I don't have a ring finger anymore.
Fuck.
The robot I saw earlier is gone and there's more screaming and yelping and gunfire. My gun is over there, by the broken Hoplite. Too far away to crawl. I'm out of EMPs. I'm out of foam shells, too. Gripping at the carpet.
"Nelly," I hear, screeching from the other room. Rhodes.
Fuck.
Are your Hoplites not doing the job? Appropriate, authorized clients may find it prudent to commission a custom Boxer-class Drone for the ultimate leader in private security. Put yourselves in trusted hands. Put yourself in TruStar hands.
Footsteps. Noss is here. Noss is beside us. She must have seen where the Boxer went. It's an elegant thing and moves without a sound and has synth-muscles and I need to get up, I need to get to Rhodes. What if she's—
"Get up," Noss tells me. "Get in cover."
I try to reach for her hand.
The Boxer comes from behind the closest bit of cover and shoots her with a high-caliber rifle.
My vision turns to blood. Noss falls. One of her legs is nothing but viscera and she took one step towards us and fell towards Ceder, and I hear both of them yell, and I am stuck there, shocked and broken, and useless.
I look up.
The Boxer turns to head to the Control Room.
I stand up.
Its head rotates on its axis to see me. My metal arm trails behind me limp but I am faster than I have ever been despite my legs failing me, despite the world dissolving into a haze. I come towards the Boxer and try and will myself to tackle it but in a moment it has stepped out of the way and slams the heft of its rifle into my chest.
Broken rib. I lose my breath and stumble into the server rack and the computers explode against me. Shattered drives and sparks and something sharp jabbing into my back.
It readies its gun again.
Boxer Drones are powered by a state-of-the-art ion battery bank designed to resist fire and cold and pressure and bullets and I am powered by nothing at all, nothing at all, and it brings the muzzle of its gun to my head, and it is too late, it has always been too late for me, and I am stuck there in that moment of death forever.
Then again I am not, and have never been, completely dead, despite being so certain of such a thing. So I tilt my head downward under the muzzle.
Fire in me. My whole world turns to a flash and my hair burns and I go forward into the dark.
I grab the Boxer's synthetic forearm with the last of my ability and shove myself into its body so hard that I feel I'm going to crumple. I am on top of it and pin it with my legs and hit it and hit it and hit it and scream and my hand isn't good enough to kill it and I hit it again and I hit it and after it is already in pieces the man called 'Rust' comes and shoots it.
- 49 -
Noss is not dead. Ceder is not dead. Somehow I am not dead, either. I have to put some bandages around the stub where my finger used to be and I'm bleeding out of my nose a bunch, not sure why, and Noss is planted flat against the floor and is completely gone from shock, but she is breathing. Ceder, to his credit, seems an invincible person, apparently unaware how much he is bleeding, and is instead just tourniqueting what is left of Noss's leg.
Rhodes is here. She guides me to the MONITOR core.
It's an enormous, cylindrical thing, made of hardened black steel, welded into a titanium frame. Most of the outer casing is just armor, just raw armor, but the internals are a mighty computer, mightier than any other I know of. Not smart, maybe, but mighty. Everything Rhodes wired herself into, and plenty more, this thing is tasked with analyzing and authorizing. Whatever Rhodes has tried to act like this past year, the MONITOR is.
I retrieve the last tools we need from the Bug Bag. Firstly, a big blanket with a Faraday cage embedded inside, which I sling over the machine's casing to block its outgoing communications entirely. Then the network key, just a little flash drive with a metal case, which I pilfered from the unconscious Noss. The maintenance hatch pops open after a little fiddling with a shim. I hear some moans and grunts and groans from the injured people elsewhere in the room, but my metal arm has stopped hurting. It just lays limp by my side. Rhodes plugs in the portable battery to get the thing started.
A little screen in the hatch comes alight, but only slightly. Black with white text. I have to squint slightly to read it.
'BOOTING AFTER UNEXPECTED SHUTDOWN.
ALERTING LEAGUE AUTHORITIES OF UNEX-
-PECTED SHUTDOWN.'
"Not today, big guy," I say, my voice entirely too hoarse.
Rhodes laughs. "Yeah, not today."
I look to her. I must look kind of fucked up, but when she looks back, I think she is just happy I am still here, and I am happy she is, too. "Ready?"
"As I can be," she says, and she plugs herself into the core.
-
It takes a little bit. I settle in with my working arm around her. I'm bleeding on her. Whatever. Job's gotta get done.
"It's not really fighting me off," she mutters. "Mostly just confused." She has plugged the network key in its slot, and that seems to have tamed the thing.
"What's the next step."
"It's pacified," she says. "Quieted down. You can prolly take the blanket off now."
I nod. It's getting kind of fuzzy again. "Sure thing," I say, and I release my grip on her to tear off the Faraday cage on top of the MONITOR, like I'm unveiling some special thing.
Rhodes takes a deep breath. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"I'm gonna write up something. Ah, ah, to... to go along with what I'm doing." Her excitement is so far behind layers of panic and fear, but it's starting to come back with every word. "I wanna tell the League something."
I don't know what that means, but I nod, and I set my head on her head.
Without her moving her hands, some words start to appear on the little screen, and I watch them.
-
'YOU HAVE A BUG IN YOUR SYSTEM.
HA-HA!
WELL, IT SHOULD BE CLEAR BY NOW THAT
LEAGUE NETWORK SECURITY IS SERIOUSLY
FUCKING ASS. BUT DON'T WORRY TOO BAD,
I FOUND THE ERRORS FOR YOU. AFTER TO-
-DAY, I WON'T HAVE ANYTHING UP MY
SLEEVE AND YOU WON'T HAVE ANY MORE
BUGS. AT LEAST UNTIL SOMEONE FINDS
SOME MORE. HA-HA!
FIRST THING: THE BERRY OPERATING SYS-
-TEM HAS A SYNTAX ERROR IN SUBROUTINE
5417 IN MAIN.CTS. IT SHOULD BE EASY TO
FIND IF YOU READ CLOSELY. IT LET ME
SET UP BACKDOORS IN ALL AFFECTED SYS-
TEMS I GOT MY HANDS ON. UNTIL NOW THE
MONITOR CORES IN VELNIAS MADE THIS
VERY DANGEROUS TO USE, AND NOW THAT
YOU CAN PATCH IT, I WILL BE COMPLETELY
USELESS AGAINST YOU.
HOWEVER, MONITOR CORES HAVE A BUG, TOO.
I FOUND SOMETHING VERY FUNNY.'
-
I'm holding her now, arm too weak to do anything else, and I laugh a little. "Thought you said Jean Jacket found the bug," I say. My nostrils are really clogged. Red hot.
"Well," Rhodes says, "she can thank me for taking the heat some other time."
-
'HERE'S THE GIST OF HOW IT WORKS:
IF YOU REALLY WANT TO HAVE TWO OR
MORE SEPARATE MONITOR CORES OVER-
-LAP THEIR COVERAGE IN A NETWORK,
YOU NEED TO KEEP THEM FROM FIGHTING
WHEN YOU DO MAINTENANCE. SO TO
AVOID CATASTROPHE, WHAT YOU DID WAS
GIVE RANDOM LEAGUE PERSONNEL SOME
EXCLUSIVE HIGH-SECURITY KEYS, WHICH
CONVERT A MONITOR CORE INTO AN
ADMINISTRATOR MONITOR CORE. DOING
THIS INCIDENTALLY HAPPENS TO GIVE IT
ABSOLUTE POWER OVER ALL OTHER
MONITORS. LOL!!! OOPS!!! MAYBE DO IT
SMARTER NEXT TIME!!! BECAUSE I FOUND
A KEY AND NOW I CAN CONTROL ALL THE
MONITOR CORES IN THE CITY!!!
BUT I'M ACTUALLY DONE WITH CAUSING
STUPID CHAOS. I DON'T WANT TO BE
CHASED FOREVER. OBVIOUSLY YOU WILL
WANT TO CHASE ME AFTER THIS, BUT I
WILL BE BETTER AT RUNNING THIS TIME,
AND I WON'T MAKE IT EASY.
I DO JUST HAVE ONE REQUEST THOUGH,
AND I KNOW IT WILL SEEM REALLY
STUPID . . .
BUT IF YOU COULD, WHOEVER IS MAKING
DECISIONS AT A HIGHER LEVEL, I WOULD
BE VERY THANKFUL IF YOU WOULD NOT
CHASE AFTER ME, BECAUSE I AM NO LONGER
THE DANGER TO YOU I ONCE WAS, AND
I WOULD JUST LIKE TO GO SOMEWHERE
NICE AND LIVE THE REST OF MY LIFE
IN PEACE, RIDICULOUS AS IT SOUNDS.
HOPEFULLY FOR THE LAST TIME,
RH0DES'
-
And she tells me that she is sending that message out on some message board somewhere, just a single time, like a scrap of paper falling into a sea. Someone will see it, she says. Someone will find it floating out there.
She talks me through the rest as my head starts to throb harder and harder. She's making the city-owned camera network in Baultriel melt itself to slag, like she said she would. She says it's like turning off a thousand little pinpricks in her mind. She's having landing beacons overvolt themselves, too, and diverting traffic, and deleting records, and turning off swear filters in chatrooms. Everything she's ever wanted. Then she leans tighter against me and whispers, and I can see all the world fading in and out of her eyes. She whispers she is forging footage of herself running away, running somewhere. For now until next year, in every camera in Salt Row, someplace, someone. The sight of a Tasran running free. She says she is drawing herself in forged witness interview documents that will place themselves inside of hard drives six months from now. She says she is on every ship in the Cestabin going every single place until the end of time, and I do not ask how or why, because it hurts too much to speak or breathe, and it is too hot, and it hurts, and I would like to rest my head here forever.