Thrill switch, p.28
Thrill Switch, page 28
Release. I’d thought the Holos was evil, but now reality was worse. There was no escaping the darkness of man whatever world you were in. That darkness simply took different forms.
I kept looking at the camera in the corner. Was he watching me now? The Spider. I could see the strap on my arm was loose again but dared not try to escape. He’d left me for now. Every noise and creak in the place made me think he was coming back. The thought made me sick. Yet part of me wanted him to come back so I could swap dread for terror. To release my mind into pain. Part of me, but not all. I was fractured. A broken thing. I wasn’t even making sense to myself. I was frozen, looking at that camera blinking. Why had he stopped? Was he now hunting my friends? Not knowing amplified my suffering.
Another noise. A door closing. Was he coming or going? I held my breath. Silence.
The light through the blinds was dying. It must be twilight. The death of another day. How long had I been there? It felt like it could be weeks. It might only be hours.
I looked at my bonds again. Maybe he wouldn’t see me in the dark if I was trying to get out. Maybe he wasn’t watching anyway. Maybe he was. So what if he was? So what if he came back? This was all pain. It was just a different kind.
I steadied my breathing. I had to find stillness somehow. It made me think of Switch meditating in her cell. Where was she now? Was she already killing again? Causing pain to others? I had to get out to stop her. Keep running that race. I had to. I had to. I just had to get up and get past another monster first. Stephenson. A lower-level enemy before the final boss.
I flexed my arm. Movement again. The strap was definitely loose. I strained. Struggled. Wriggled my fingers on my right hand. Got them under the strap again. I watched the door as I did. No sound still. My fingers worked the strap, pulling it bit by bit. Darkness fell.
After hours of trying in the cover of night, I finally made the strap click loose. The end stuck out of the buckle like a party popper ribbon ready to be pulled. I gritted my teeth to stop from crying out. Only one more clasp to go and it would give way completely. It wasn’t celebration time yet. My head was still held tight, so I couldn’t bend down and use my teeth to help. Twisting my wrist around instead, I managed to pinch the end of the strap between two fingers. If I could just jiggle it looser.
My whole being concentrated on that strap. Every ounce of will tugging it to and fro. My fingers slipped off it again and again. Each failure felt like Stephenson’s knives slicing me. I clenched my jaw in determination. Kept trying. Failed. Tried again. Fraction by fraction, the strap started to gave way. The final clasp looked set to slip free with a heave on my end. Would it be enough? I wrenched my wrist back. It didn’t work. I tried again. It slid a little. Yes. A bit further. Further.
A noise. My eyes snapped toward the door. I could just make out a thin line of light beneath the frame. I waited. The door stayed closed. No shadows passed on the other side.
I wrenched again. The clasp popped free. My hand came free. Oh, god, yes. Instantly, I grasped for my head, eyes wide like a frenzied beast. I needed to get my head out.
The door stayed closed.
I fumbled then found my head restraint. Shaking fingers tugged it loose. I sat bolt upright, thinking I was done but my other arm tugged me back. Shit.
The door stayed closed.
I worked that arm free, then my feet. I swung off the bench. Stumbled. Steadied. I looked around trying to figure out what to do. Should I try the window? The door? The camera blinked. I should try the window.
I moved to step forward and an arm slid casually around my neck.
I would have screamed but the arm choked me in the darkness, pulling me back into a warm body.
‘Sssh,’ the voice said. ‘Quiet. It’s okay.’
It was a familiar voice. One I hadn’t heard in seven long years. My heart ground to a halt.
Dad?
My heart thumped double time. I grasped at his arm and it loosened. I turned.
It was him! My father. Alive. Impossible. But there he was in the flesh, exactly like I remembered, strong and vibrant. I thought for a moment that maybe I’d died and gone to heaven. Dad smiled.
I wanted to ask a thousand things. To untangle the possibility of it all. To tell him I was sorry. To tell him I was glad that he hadn’t really died. That the technicians had lied to me. That they said they didn’t save him when they did. To tell him who I was now. To weep about my torture. To ask him where he’d gone. But all that came out was:
‘Dad?’
‘Sssh,’ he said, pulling me into a hug again.
His body was warm around me. Safe. Loving. He held me for a long time in that embrace. I felt like a little girl again… like before the hate of the world tainted me. I felt right. I felt like everything would be okay.
Then I remembered. Stephenson.
‘Dad, we have to go,’ I said quickly. ‘He’ll be back soon. That monster. Stephens-’
‘Sssh,’ he said, holding me tighter, stopping me from moving. ‘You’re not going anywhere. You haven’t suffered enough yet.’
I didn’t understand. I pulled my head back to look at him again. That gorgeous, comforting smile on his face. It turned into a horrid grin. His teeth were pointed. His breath stunk like rotten meat.
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ he repeated, gripping my arms tight. His fingers dug into the cuts on my skin. ‘Your friends haven’t given me the file yet. It’s time to play some more.’
61
CORPUS WORKED IN Sabi’s studio. They’d come directly through a jack-in point Sabi had designed for stealthy entry. She was a savant herself when it came to code, and more than a little paranoid. Joon’s kind of person. Corpus’s too it seemed. They had hit it off right away talking about their favorite coding languages and offshoot dialects. They’d both agreed excitedly that advances in recent DWIM architecture made it easier to program quickly, but nothing replaced raw languages when it came to creating something elegant from first principles.
Sabi watched over Corpus’s shoulder as Joon paced. Every few moments he checked the livestream Cline had sent him. Ada was there on that table in the dark, occasionally shifting but going nowhere. At least it was proof she was alive. Proof she was being left alone.
Corpus’s fingers danced over a virtual keyboard. He’d chosen a male avatar again. Straightforward without adornment. He looked comfortable in the shell. Not like in the real where she’d been a shell of a person. Where he’d been a shell of a person, Joon corrected in his mind. This was Corpus’s true self right here. It was impossible to miss. Him. The way he sat contented. In flow. Corpus turned the file around and around, teasing at strands of code one at a time, working to pry the knot loose. At the same time, he multitasked in other windows. He checked policy markets. He scrolled the Feed. He dove into the dark web and pulled out encryption keys. The pace at which Corpus maximized and minimized screens made Joon’s head spin. He couldn’t keep track. Yet Corpus barely broke a sweat. Finally, the hacker stabbed the keyboard in front of him three times with a single finger and everything coalesced. A golden image of the file shone above him and Sabi.
‘Wonderful,’ Sabi said. ‘Whoever put this together is a genius. A master.’
Corpus was perversely enjoying this too. A smile played on his lips the whole time. Sabi pointed to the 3D display.
‘See how that’s wrapped around the no-copy code?’ she marveled. ‘It’s like they’re one and the same.’
‘I see it,’ Corpus said. ‘The no-copy part can’t be separated. But if we crack the lock here we might be able to hold everything else together.’
He hit another button on his keyboard and the display blazed with light. The whole thing solidified into a physical representation of a virtual puzzle. Corpus stood up and touched the strand Sabi had pointed out. It was real in his hand now.
‘Perfect,’ Sabi said.
‘Nothing’s perfect,’ Corpus said. ‘You know that. We’re all broken, just some more beautifully than others.’
With that, he pulled a strand outward. It came loose and the file shattered into fragments.
‘No!’ Joon said, thinking it had been corrupted.
But Sabi and Corpus were still smiling.
When the light of the shell had dissipated, it revealed a tiny galaxy of dots. They were sub-files, all strung together by a web of barely visible strands. Corpus touched one of the subfiles. It zapped into view, enlarging.
It was a picture of Fukami. Numbers tallied underneath. SureCoin. Mercury. The profits were staggering.
Joon stood there dumbstruck. This was it. Fukami. He was involved after all. He’d been investing in Mercury heavily for a long time, and would stand to make trillions when the law bill passed.
‘More about money than power,’ Joon said.
Corpus looked over his shoulder and nodded.
‘Can we copy this?’ Joon asked.
Corpus shook his head. ‘No. The uncopiable part is still woven in.’
‘Screen snap? Film?’
‘No.’ Sabi touched another dot. It too blew up to visible size. Gibson. Another dot. Cline. Another. Entown. The soldier’s personal history was all on display. Much more detailed than the file Senator Rommel had provided.
Joon stepped forward. He put his hand on the screen and took all of Entown’s info inside him. In a second, he knew it was hopeless.
‘No,’ he said softly.
‘What?’ Sabi asked.
‘I thought it would tell us where Entown’s bunker is. It must be where he’s keeping Ada.’
‘Bunker?’ Corpus asked, eyes still on the files.
He shifted them around, seemingly reading and sorting them without having to make them larger.
‘We had a suspect called Bleesh who knew Entown had a bunker somewhere. ‘A sweet bunker’ were the exact words. Entown thought it was some great joke.’
Corpus continued to shuffle files, but Sabi sat down, thinking.
Joon looked at the live feed on his wrist again. The light was dying in Ada’s cell. Things were shifting into shadows. Darkness. Light. Joon realized how stupid he’d been. The light in there had been coming from a curtained window on the far wall. Bunkers didn’t have windows, did they? Bleesh was lying—or mistaken. This was hopeless. The sense of elation he’d felt at seeing the file open splintered to dust. They had proof of corruption, but they couldn’t get to Ada. He couldn’t sacrifice her for this, no matter what. He couldn’t. She was too good of a person.
Sabi moved to Joon’s shoulder and looked at the livestream. Her head shifted. ‘Sweet bunker?’ she murmured to herself.
Corpus zapped through more files like a focused laser. He stabbed one with his finger and it all came up, drawing Joon’s attention.
The whole plan was mapped out. Reasoning. Work flows. Payments. Every person involved. It was the master file. Joon gaped. This couldn’t be right. But there it was in True-Res. His heart sank. There were more people involved than he wanted to believe. This wouldn’t just change the Holos forever; it would change America, the whole world, if these people were left unchecked by justice. Joon had an impossible decision to make.
‘We have to turn this file over,’ he said quietly. ‘We have to show the media. This is bigger than Ada.’
Joon’s eyes roamed quickly, searching for something. Any last-minute thing he could use. Sabi turned away, pulling up her own screen and scrolling. Joon tallied all the people on the list. Saw something important, or rather didn’t see it.
‘Sheriff Mendez,’ he said. ‘She’s not on here. That must mean she’s clean. We can get her to help arrest everyone. Use this list to build a team that can do it. Use deduction to get clean cops and FBI agents to help. We have to work fast though. We might be out of time. What’s Rommel’s policy paying on the markets?’
Corpus clicked a few buttons on the type pad in front of him.
‘$1.10,’ he confirmed. ‘We’re not too late, but it could hit the threshold any time and go into law. We have to stop it. Stop all these fuckers from benefitting. They weren’t trying to stop that bill from happening. They just wanted to profit from it.’
Joon looked at his wrist-comm and paused. Ada was up and off the bed. She was struggling with someone? It looked like she was choking. Then Joon saw something that defied reality. Something that explained how a bunker could have windows. Ada’s father. He was supposed to be dead. Was dead. That could only mean one thing…
Right then, Sabi clapped her hands. She swiped her screen into Joon’s eyesight.
‘A sweet bunker,’ she said.
There was a picture of a military-style bunker in the desert, concrete jutting from the rocks and sand. A rusted chain link fence sat around it.
‘Sugar Bunker,’ Sabi explained. ‘Just outside of Vegas. It’s an old nuclear bomb test facility. Abandoned by the military and locked tight.’
Joon could have kissed Sabi. She was a genius. A sweet bunker. Entown’s hideout.
Then a scream from Joon’s wrist-comm rang out. Ada.
They had to get to her, now.
62
MY SCREAM FELT like it would rip my vocal cords right out of my throat. My dad, my protector, had forced me back onto the bench. He’d bound me again. Held tight. Too strong against my weak body. Reality collapsed around me. My mind couldn’t cope. The room was a black hole. Dad was a pinpoint of light in the middle, bright and terrifying. He sharpened Entown’s knives. The implements of torture that had already torn me apart. Maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe the torture finally snapped me. Maybe this was my new reality. I cried, looking at my father as he worked the edge of the blade to a razor’s edge.
‘You shouldn’t have left me to die, naughty girl,’ he said. ‘You failed me. You gave up on me.’
‘No,’ my scream was now a silent whisper. The mere mouthing of words. ‘No.’
‘But I didn’t die,’ he continued. ‘I became a disciple of Switch instead. Her power was beyond anything I ever thought possible. You’d have to feel it inside you to understand. That power.’
I writhed on my bench, trying to get away from the words. Trying to get away from the truth of them. Dad stepped forward again. I’d left him when I shouldn’t have and this was my punishment. After all these years, I was getting what I deserved.
‘I studied Switch just like you did,’ Dad stepped close enough to rest a cold blade on my foot, not cutting, just waiting. ‘But I didn’t loath her like you. I understood her. The Holos shouldn’t be caged. Only freedom can bring true, lasting order. So I came up with a master plan. I recruited protectors for that glorious place. Built a web of people dedicated to its freedom. People like Entown Stephenson and Filton Fukami and your new police friends. Everyone. I brought the threat of death back into the virtual world just like Switch wanted. She was right. It’s the ultimate consequence. A thrill-bringer like no other. The prospect of dying makes you feel more alive. I should know. I got closer than most. But I couldn’t replicate her secret of murder, so I used Entown to simulate it. To make perception a reality until I could free Switch from her own cage. Unleash her on the world again. Thank you for doing that too. Your police friends told me she broke free. Just another failure of yours.’
Dad slowly dragged the edge of the knife along the sole of my foot. I couldn’t move it away. Yet the pain was nothing against my father’s words slicing into me.
‘I didn’t want you in my plan,’ he said, ‘because I knew you were weak. That you’d fail when it mattered and give up when things got tough, like you gave up on me. You’re useless. Dumb.’
He sounded like mother.
‘You’re a waste of my sperm. Nothing but a dumpster for the seed of others. Well, I’ll show you want you’re good for.’
He crawled up on the bench then, unzipping his pants. I struggled to slide backward but was held in place by the straps. All I could do was weep. Useless like he said. I couldn’t even shake my head to rattle away the despair that closed in on all sides. Stupidly, I tried to rub the ring on my thumb. Dad’s ring. It wasn’t there. Had he taken it back too? I looked. Nothing on his hands. Nothing in them but the knife. I looked down at my own hands, pinned as they were. Those hands were caked in blood. My blood. There was a smear on the thumb where I’d rubbed. And there was something beneath. A ring, but not a metal one. A tattoo with a check mark. I struggled to make sense of it. It didn’t compute. I just stared as my father climbed over me, his face sneering into mine. I looked back at him. That ugly face.
I knew then it wasn’t him. He’d never looked like that in his life. Was never filled with hate, even when angry. The truth of it rushed up inside me. It bubbled out of me in a manic laugh. I must have sounded and looked insane. The face of my father. The heart of a spider. This was Entown. And this wasn’t reality. It was his virtual playground.
‘What’s funny?’ he growled in my father’s voice.
He must have simulated the perfect tone of that voice from old recordings. Researched my weaknesses. My fears. My breaking points.
But I was not broken. Not fully. Not yet.
