Electric City
Electric City existed only in the minds of the
inhabitants of Babylon. Bounded by two subway stations, it ran rampant across
streets and neighborhoods, violating the grids laid down by the city planners
long ago. Administratively it was divided between three precincts, quietly
encroaching on a fourth. To the government, it was an anomaly. To the people,
it was an electronics paradise.
Consumer computers, DIY electronics, video games,
household appliances; if it ran on electricity, if it had a silicon brain, it
could be found in Electric City. Entire shopping malls specializing in tech
bloomed across the area, offering cutting-edge rigs, secondhand parts, the
latest boutique products from corps allied with the New Gods, assemblers to
fabricate computers from the ground up.
With tech came the entertainment industry. Video
games, movies, television, they were a natural partnership for tech. Wedged in
between the shopping centers were themed stores and media cafes, arcades and
theaters, crammed into narrow high-rises that sprouted like weeds all over the
neighborhood. Forests of neon signs and holograms advertised the latest trends
in fashions and pop culture. Electric City was a haven for youths, but anyone
who came to worship at the altar of technology was welcome here.
The perfect place for a hacker to call home.
Electric City never slept. It merely downshifted in
the deepness of the night, as though storing up energy for the day. Even now,
an hour before dawn, it was revving up for the morning crowd. Late-night
workers trudged out of their workplaces, swapping cigarettes and stories with
their replacements. Salarymen and students in crumpled clothing emerged from
all-night cafes and hotels, hustling to the trains before anyone they knew
recognized them. Shopkeepers unshuttered their stores and prepared their wares.
Gynoids in fancy dress, all of them young women in increasingly outrageous
uniforms and costumes, stepped out to the roads and ran through their start-up
diagnostics. Delivery trucks pulled up outside convenience stores and shopping
malls, while flying drones dropped off packages on balconies and drone pads.
Fox studied them all, watching for anything out of
place.
Or tried.
She’d been up for a full day without sleep. Her
eyelids drooped. Fatigue weighed down her muscles. The successive firefights
had consumed every last drop of adrenaline in her veins. Even a hot cup of
vending machine coffee barely kept her awake. It took all her concentration
just to stay on the go. She had no idea of the rhythms of Electric City this
time of the day; as far as she was concerned, every person and every bot,
unless proven otherwise, was a threat.
The rest of the Black Watch was gassing out too. All
the same, they kept to their standards of tradecraft.
They dispersed their vehicles at the edges of Electric
City, parking them in underground or multistory parking lots, safely hidden
from casual observation. On foot, they converged on an unassuming high-rise.
Twelve stories tall, it was a narrow column of raw concrete two windows wide,
sandwiched between a dental clinic and a shorter but wider apartment block. Its
only unusual feature was its utter plainness in contrast to the madness of
Electric City.
The team converged at the narrow entrance, approaching
from every direction. Silently they formed up in pairs, then in threes, each
operator looking over the shoulder of the one opposite him. Karim shuffled out
of an alley and walked next to Fox. Tan, his head covered with a ball cap,
drifted out a convenience store and joined them. Fox scanned in every
direction, checking mirrors and corners, cars and doors, keeping her head low
and away from the streetlight cameras.
At the doorstep
of the building, Yamamoto nodded at Tan. The shorter operator walked up to the
door and rang the intercom. An instant later, the speaker crackled.
“Yes.”
A man’s voice. High-pitched but assured. Not a
question, but a statement.
“It’s me. I’m here with my friends,” Tan said.
“Passphrase?”
Tan’s shoulders slumped, his eyes widening as they
rolled up.
“Sakura under a silver moon.”
What
kind of idiot calls that a passphrase? Fox wondered.
“Come in.”
The intercom buzzed, and the door unlocked.
Eschewing the elevator, Tan led the team up the
stairs. It was so tight they had to move in single file, the wooden steps steep
and narrow. The eighth floor landing wasn’t much better, a claustrophobic
antechamber with a parquet floor and a mass-produced painting of a generic vase
of flowers. There was a single door and a welcome mat. That was all.
The team squeezed and shuffled around Tan, positioning
themselves by the door, the elevator and the stairs as best as they could. Fox
found herself hovering behind Tan’s shoulder. This close to the entrance, she
noted the discreet security measures. The doorbell came with an integrated
video camera and microphone, the handle had a keypad with one-touch lock button
and a backup keyhole, a barred security grille defended the door. The door
itself was thick and sturdy, no doubt wood overlaid over steel, reinforced with
high-security bolts.
The heavy snap of multiple deadbolts confirmed her
hypothesis. The door swung open, revealing—
A maid.
A maid with an hourglass figure and slender legs,
packaged in a short-sleeved black dress paired with a white apron. Her hemline
ended at mid-thigh, and her white stockings disappeared under the fabric. She
stood taller than Tan, augmented by her five-inch heels.
Her eyes were an unnatural shade of purple, huge and
child-like. Her rust-red hair flowed down in long, silky locks that draped over
her ample chest. Black cat ears poked out from her crown, sandwiching her white
frilly headband. And an honest-to-God tail
coiled out from under her dress.
Fox blinked.
Blinked again.
During the drive over, Tan had warned the team that
his contact was eccentric. This, though…
The maid bowed, eyes and head downcast, white-gloved
hands folded before her.
“Good morning, Mr. Tan and honored guests. The master
is expecting you.”
She gracefully pivoted on her feet, swinging the door
open. Tan wiped off his shoes and made entry. Fox followed in his footsteps. As
she brushed past the maid, she caught a scent of lilac and roses.
She wasn’t human. Not completely human. Her eyes alone
was proof, much less the… additional features. She wasn’t just a house maid; in
that get-up, she had to provide bed service too.
But.
Her eyes were wide open, scanning side to side and up
and down, scanning Fox as she passed. She held the door open with her right
hand, her left hand touching her dress. She was completely loose and relaxed,
ready for instant action. Her smile was fake and her gaze cold.
And her eyes were dry.
Human eyes were coated in a thin layer of tears. The
fluid lubricated the eyes, removed irritants, and aided the immune system. But
the maid’s eyes were hard and dull and matte. They didn’t reflect the light the
way organic eyes would.
Prosthetics? Or something else?
In the living room, she found the next surprise.
A woman stood in a corner. Tall and lithe, she wore a
scarlet catsuit that gleamed in the light. The garment covered everything and
concealed nothing, accented with black ankle boots the color of night, leaving
only her face exposed. Black vertical zippers dangled daringly from her breasts
and crotch.
But there was something off about her, and not just her appearance. Her hair was pale as
snow, her cold wide eyes the yellow shade of a panther. Her latex-covered hands
were huge for a woman, almost disproportionately so. She smiled invitingly, a
tigress welcoming her prey, flicking her gaze back and forth, scanning the
newcomers.
Slipping around Tan, Fox surveyed the living room.
A third woman sat on a sofa, directly in line with the
door, even more scantily dressed than the last two. A blood-red lace bustier, a
matching G-string, thigh-high stockings with garters and suspenders, delicate
red see-through gloves. Her eyes and hair were the same color as her clothes.
She sat wantonly, legs spread out like an ‘M’, smiling invitingly.
Fox wasn’t fooled. Her high heels were planted flat on
the thick carpet, her hands resting squarely on the armrests, spine erect and
floating away from the backing of the sofa, ready to launch herself across the
room. Her cyan hair was styled in a bob cut—too short to be easily grabbed and
manipulated. Her gaze was completely still, trained on the entrance hallway.
The women were more than what they seemed.
The men of the Black Watch ignored the women. They
spread out across the room, dominating the door, the rear corners, the hallway
on the right that fed to the rest of the apartment, positioning themselves to
clear lines of sight and fire to the three women.
The master of the house watched them all in silence.
He lounged alone on a plush leather sofa, legs crossed, hands on his knees. He
was absurdly thin, anorexic almost, his skull a blown-up almond resting on a
narrow stalk of a neck, almost too large for the rest of his body. His blue
suit, fitted perfectly to his body, shone softly in the light, the way premium
silk would. His skin was pale and thin, the sign of a man who rarely saw
daylight. His face was completely flat and emotionless, and he stared at the
Black Watch with a feverish, unblinking intensity.
“Zen. We meet again,” he said.
His accent was posh and clipped, alien to Babylon, as
though it had come from a distant gilded age. He spoke so softly, she had to
strain her ears to hear him. But he was definitely the one who had answered the
intercom.
“Alex. It’s been a while,” Tan said.
His name wasn’t Alex. Tan had repeatedly stressed that
back at the beach. It was only the most recent of his aliases, and Tan wouldn’t
give up his real name.
“These are your friends?” Alex asked.
“Yup.”
Tan quickly introduced the team, using only their
first names. Fox would have preferred their callsigns, but everyone had to
assume that they were known to the enemy.
Alex swept his arm in a stiff arc, gesturing at the
dining table and the cushions on the floor. “Please, sit however you like.
Would you like any drinks?”
“Coffee,” Tan said.
“Coffee,” Fox echoed.
Everyone voted in favor of coffee.
“Cindy, prepare six hot coffees for everyone,” Alex
said. “Cream and sugar.”
“Yes master,” the bustier-clad woman replied.
She unfolded herself to her full height and sashayed
away. Glancing behind her shoulder, Fox saw the maid standing by the closet
next to the front door, her body completely still.
Fox wondered why the maid didn’t do it. Perhaps Alex’s
order had vacated a space for the rest of the team.
The operators arranged themselves across the living
room and dining table in a ragged semi-circle, their backs facing the walls.
Fox took the sofa Cindy had left.
“You did well for yourself,” Tan said.
Alex nodded silently. On the rise, he tilted his head
back slightly, looking down his nose at Tan.
The living room was elegantly furnished. Massive
holographic television fitted flush against the wall, mated to expensive
speakers and cameras. A soft synthetic silk carpet covered the floor in a
blanket of pure white. Shelves flanked the TV, crammed with thick books. The
dining table and chairs were cut from white marble, supported on legs of dark
teak. A crystal chandelier provided soft illumination, slowly adjusting with
the rising of the sun. Paintings and blown-up black-and-white photographs hung
on the walls.
But the luxury was married to security. The windows
were unusually thick, no doubt translucent ceramic rated for small-arms fire.
Motion sensors waited above the doors and windows. An alarm panel was mounted
at eye level next to the hallway. And these were just the visible security
measures.
In such posh surroundings, Fox felt distinctly out of
place. Her clothes were caked with dirt, and she reeked of sweat and gunpowder.
The men were little different.
“Are you well?” Alex asked.
Tan licked his lips and drummed his fingers against
his knee.
“We’re in a tight spot,” he admitted. “We could really
use your help.”
“Yes, you said as much on the phone. I heard reports
of a massive shootout at Fortune City, and two smaller ones at a hotel and an
apartment. Was that you?”
“And the New Gods,” Tan said.
Alex’s eyebrow drifted sharply. “They’re going after
the STS?”
“Just us. For now.”
“What did you do to offend them?”
“That’s what we need your help with.”
“Tell me everything.”
Fox held up a hand. “Do your… companions need to be
here?”
Alex smiled thinly. “Every day I trust them with my
secrets, and my life. You can trust them with yours.”
Tan briefed Alex on the situation, starting from the
events of Riveria, skipping ahead to the Golden Mile, and filling in the blanks
the civilian needed to understand the situation. Here and there, the other
operators chimed in, adding their perspectives.
Alex listened intently, his eyes never once blinking.
Occasionally he rocked slightly back and forth, or switched legs, but his butt
was fixed to his spot.
Cindy returned with a coffee pot and six glasses on a
larger silver tray. Smaller pots held milk and sugar. With deft, elegant movements,
she filled the glasses with steaming black liquid. When the last glass was
full, she bowed, and stepped back.
“Here, try this first,” Tan said, nudging forward a
glass at random.
Alex unhesitatingly picked it up, poured in a heavy
dose of milk and sugar, and swallowed a huge mouthful.
“Thanks,” Tan said.
He refilled the glass, carefully rotating it to avoid
the spot where Alex’s lips had touched, and took a sip.
The rest of the Black Watch followed. Fox had her
drink black. It was the good stuff. Rich and aromatic, it was a bitter bomb of
concentrated caffeine. A single sip flushed the fatigue from her brain and
muscles.
The men continued talking. Cindy stood in the corner
opposite the catsuited woman and assumed the same posture. Now slightly more
alert, Fox calculated angles and vectors, and realized that the women had
placed themselves out of the line of sight from the windows.
As had everybody else, as best as they could.
At last, the Black Watch concluded their brief. Alex
sat in silence for a beat, as though processing it all.
Everyone sipped and waited for him.
And at last, he spoke.
“The New Gods believe you have leverage over them. The
Seekers of the Way captured and interrogated you, and presumably they now have
control of the information formerly in your possession. You need my help to
reconstruct the data you imaged and decrypt them. Is this correct?”
“Yup,” Tan confirmed.
“Why do you need it?”
“We need to know why they’re after us.”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? The Court of Shadows and the
Void Collective want their data back. The Seekers of the Way, and the rest of
the New Gods, want to gain an advantage over their rivals. Now that the Seekers
have the data, the heat should be off you.”
“Only if the Seekers tell the other New Gods that they
have the information now,” Yamamoto pointed out.
“And after what we did to them over the past year,
they all have an axe to grind with us,” Connor added. “They’re not going to
stop until we’re all dead.”
“True,” Alex conceded. “But the data is already in the
hands of the New Gods. What do you hope to do with it if you managed to crack
it?”
“Publish it,” Yamamoto said.
Alex raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Whatever dirt we dug up on them, it’s damaging enough
that they’re pulling out all the stops. The Seekers deployed military-grade
hardware and Hellions on the streets. That means they believe the costs of
disclosure far outweigh the costs of deploying that kind of firepower. They
don’t care about staying below the radar, only about getting their hands on the
data. There’s something in that data that they don’t want anybody else to know.
“That data is like a bomb. It’s extremely deadly if
left alone. But once detonated, it can’t harm you again. Likewise, once the
data is published, I’m willing to bet the New Gods will have far too much on
their hands to worry about than going after us.”
“You sound quite confident in your hypothesis,” Alex
said.
“Why else would they use such high-profile measures?”
“But you don’t know anything about the information Zen
gathered.”
“We don’t. But if the New Gods are willing to kill for
it, it tells us how important it is to them.”
“True. But I have another question for you. All of
you.”
“Go ahead,” Fox said warily.
“A half hour before you came here, the New Gods posted
a bounty on Dark Web job boards. They’re offering a quarter of a million
dollars for each of you. Half a million if you’re taken alive. From my
perspective, I’m looking at a three million dollar payday. More, if I can
auction you to the New Gods.”
Hands went to waists and beltlines. Fox’s own flew to
the butt of her pistol, her brain preparing firing solutions. Without a word,
the men of the Black Watch oriented towards the closest targets, facing the
women.
The women did not react.
“Was that a threat?” Connor said coldly.
“Merely an observation. If you wish for me to help
you, you are asking me to assume a high degree of risk and to forfeit a rich reward
in exchange for… what, precisely?”
“You owe me,” Tan said. “When I busted you while you
were still in high school, I could have recommended hard time. Instead, I got
you a job offer from the Bureau. Without that, you wouldn’t have gotten to
where you are now. And over the years, I sent a lot of sugar your way.”
“Correct. And I am grateful. Nonetheless, the favor of
the New Gods is worth far more than that of a team of rogue cops. In addition,
if, or more precisely, when, the New
Gods learn that I’ve helped you, where does that leave me? I don’t have your
skills, resources or connections. Would you ask me to commit suicide on your
behalf?”
Tan’s face flushed. Fox rested her palm on his
shoulder.
“Easy. Alex, you said Zen got you a job with the PSB.
How did that happen?”
“I got careless. The PSB traced me and arrested me.
During sentencing, the judge gave me a choice. I could go for reformative
training, or work for the government. I understand Zen had pushed the judge to
extend that offer to me.”
“Nice digs you have here,” Mustafa observed. “How did
you afford this on a government salary?”
“I didn’t.”
“You supplemented your income with… shall we say, side
hustles,” Fox said.
“Correct. After my term of service was over, my side
hustle became my day job. And here I am now.”
“What do you
do, exactly?”
His lips twitched upwards. He leaned in. His irises
dilated.
“I am a cybersecurity engineer.”
Tan laughed.
“And I got a nice house by Babylon Bay to sell you.”
“No thanks, I am quite satisfied with this one.”
Tan shook his head.
“Man, don’t be so literal, why don’t you?”
Alex shrugged, still smiling.
“What do you really
do?” Fox pressed.
“I buy and sell information to people who can make use
of it. On occasion, I obtain that information myself. I may also be contracted
to perform other data-related services on a discretionary basis.”
“You hack into computers, steal their data, and sell
it,” Karim translated.
Alex shrugged and said nothing.
“But that’s not all you do,” Fox probed.
“There are many things you can do once you’ve
compromised a computer,” Alex said. “I’m sure you’re aware of what a cracker
can do. Suffice to say that I have done those things and profited quite
handsomely from it.”
“And if you’re weren’t an official government
contractor, protected by the PSB and STS, we would have looked hard into what
you do,” Tan pointed out.
Alex nodded slowly.
“True. But you are not my only protectors, and the STS
is losing its power and prestige.”
“On the other hand, you let us in,” Yamamoto said. “That
means you want something from us.”
Alex smirked.
“Oh?”
“It’s true, isn’t it?” Fox pressed. “If you wanted to
hand us to the New Gods, you wouldn’t have arranged to meet us here. What do you want?”
Alex slowly rocked back and forth, a smile growing across
his face.
“I am a businessman. You know what the New Gods are
offering me. Make me a counteroffer.”
“The data,” Tan said. “You’ll get first crack at it.
You’ll have inside access to the dirty laundry of the Court of the Shadows and
the Void Collective. I’m sure a man in your position would be well-placed to
make use of this information. It’ll be worth far more than three million
dollars.”
“Tempting, but once you publish the information, it
loses all value as leverage.”
“What if we gave you advance notice?” Fox asked.
“How much notice? From my perspective, you would want
to release the information as soon as you have it to eliminate the threat to
yourself.”
“The information won’t immediately lose its value when
it’s published,” Tan said. “It needs to be processed, analyzed, verified.
Ordinary people don’t have the tools needed to rapidly process vast amounts of
data. Large organizations must overcome bureaucratic inertia. They’ll take
days, even weeks, to catch up.
“But you, you have text scrapers and bots, don’t you?
And you don’t have to deal with paperwork or other such nonsense. Once you have
the raw data, you can process it immediately, get ahead of the game, do what
you have to do before the house of cards comes tumbling down.”
“I see. Is that all?”
“And one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“We don’t tell the New Gods about the jobs you ran against them for us. The Court of
Shadows would be very interested to know who uncovered links between them and
the Guzman Cartel, the Singularity Network would love to find out who breached
their Net last year, the Liberated are still hunting for the ones who hacked
into their slush funds—”
“I see your point,” Alex interrupted.
“How about it?” Yamamoto asked.
“These terms are acceptable. I accept your
commission.” Alex clapped his hands twice. “Girls, high home security posture.”
The women sprang into action.
The maid opened a closet and reached in. A lock
beeped. Out come a black bullpup dual-tube shotgun, fitted with a red dot
sight. She slung the weapon over her left shoulder, then donned a bandoleer of
shotgun shells over her right. Shotgun in hand, she stood watch next to the
door.
Cindy and the other woman tottered over to the
bookshelves. Running their hands down the sides, they undid invisible latches,
grabbed the tops of the shelves, and pulled. The bookshelves slid open on
unseen rails, revealing hidden gun closets.
Long guns rested inside gun racks. Pistols hung from
holsters on the doors. The interior shelves held magazines and boxes of spare
ammo. Each woman selected an M83 carbine, configured as an ultra-compact weapon
and loaded with a 75-round drum, and slung it around her neck. They reached for
the top shelves, each pulling out a H-harness laden with pouches. Working
swiftly, they clipped on the load bearing gear and inspected each pouch.
They closed the shelves and broke off. Cindy marched
to the window. The woman in the catsuit positioned herself by the hallway
between the living room and the bedrooms.
“High home security posture, ready,” Cindy said.
“Who… what
are they?” Fox asked.
“Gynoids. The latest iteration of Kawano’s Angel line.
They were custom ordered using three separate aliases, delivered to three
different addresses, before being brought here. And before you ask, yes, I am
aware of the backdoor and data tap the Singularity Network installs in all
Angel gynoids. I deleted them from their operating systems, triple-checked
their programming, and run full diagnostics and scans after every firmware
update.”
Fox was right. The bots’ appearance was meant to be
arresting and provocative, to distract intruders from their true function until
it was too late.
“They aren’t playbots, huh?” Connor said.
“They have many uses.”
As he spoke, Alex uncrossed his legs, re-crossed them
left over right, and rocked slowly back and forth, talking not to Connor, but
to the floor.
“You’d rather buy bots than hire humans?” Fox asked.
“Humans are… complex. Difficult. Easier to work with
bots than humans. And, as I said, the Angels have many purposes. Security is
among them. You’d be hard-pressed to find humans who can do what these Angels
can.”
For the first time since they arrived, he seemed
flustered. He rocked faster, talking to the carpet.
A wave of pity washed over Fox. She’d known more than
a few guys like him throughout her life. If he had what she thought he had, he
was probably far more comfortable with computers than humans. If you program a
bot properly, download and debug appropriate software, you would know exactly
what to expect from it. You would know how it would act, it would do exactly
what you told it to do, and it would never let you down.
You couldn’t say the same for humans.
Abruptly he went still.
And looked up at Fox.
She met his intense stare with one of her own. No
challenge in it, just mirroring what he offered.
He stayed there for a moment, as if demanding her to
say something.
She held her peace.
He sighed.
Rocked himself up to his feet.
“I’ve learned everything I need to know. Let’s get
started.”
Babylon Blues is the culmination of a five-part cyberpunk horror saga. If you want to read them all in a single collection, plus a bonus story, back the Babylon Blues Remastered Kickstarter here!
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