Hammerjack Page 23

  The medicinal cloud drifted into Yin’s face. He wiped the stinging liquid from his eyes, but by then Avalon had taken hold of his throat. Oxygen flowed sparingly to his brain—enough to keep him conscious, but barely.

  His limbs went limp. Avalon relaxed her grip slightly, after she had made her point. The featureless mosaic of her eyes conveyed the same message.

  “You should have more patience, Yin,” she said. “This really is presumptuous of you.”

  “Forgive me,” he forced out.

  Her ashen lips parted into a scowl. She released him.

  Yin drew back. He stumbled, coughing and clutching his wounded neck. The damage could have been worse, but he was still arrogant enough to resent it.

  “That was unnecessary,” he said. “You could have spoken up.”

  “I didn’t hear you asking.”

  “You know how this works,” he reminded her. “None of us is to be taken alive. I couldn’t take the chance that you would reveal what you know to Special Services.”

  “You forget who I am.”

  “I have never forgotten,” Yin retorted. “You know as well as I do how they interrogate prisoners. You would have done the same if the situation were reversed.”

  Avalon reached down and felt along the floor, following her memory of where the hypospray had fallen. She found the small device and held it up, so Yin could contemplate his mistake.

  “The situation would have never arisen, had I been adequately informed,” Avalon fired back. “Dr. Alden has allies—resourceful allies. Had I known, I would have taken precautions.”

  Yin’s eyes narrowed.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A hammerjack,” she said. “Whoever it was took control of the pulser before I could deliver Alden to the Zone. He then knocked both of our hovercraft out of the sky. Quite a trick for a pilot in an unarmed ship.”

  Yin felt weak again and pulled a seat up next to the bed.

  “Alden did end up in the Zone,” he explained. “I tracked his signal to a hotel in Chelsea and dispatched a squad of agents to intercept him. None of them returned.” He paused for a sober moment and considered what he already knew, in light of what Avalon told him. “Witnesses reported seeing a woman with him.”

  “I’ll have to revise my estimation,” Avalon said. “The hammerjack is undoubtedly that woman. Do you have a profile?”

  “Nothing specific. But I know who she is.”

  Avalon leaned in toward him as he spoke the name. Even without her sensuit, Yin believed she would be able to tell if he was lying.

  “It’s Heretic.”

  It sounded like truth. Still, she appeared dubious.

  “Are you certain?”

  “It is Heretic,” Yin insisted. “Signature analysis confirmed the lines of communication between her and the runner she was using to smuggle the flash prototype.”

  “Do you have any idea who she really is?”

  “I suspected it was somebody who had worked in our ranks,” he confessed. “If Heretic is a woman, that narrows down the list of suspects.”

  “Just tell me her name.”

  “Lea Prism.”

  Avalon rolled back over, blank eyes facing the ceiling. “Lea Prism,” she repeated under her breath, each time a precise calculation of motive and intent. “How much does she know about the process?”

  “She helped design it.”

  “Which means she will discover the information Alden is carrying—and she will know how to make use of it.”

  Yin was reluctant to confirm her suspicions. More than ever, he wished he could have killed her. But even in her sightless state, he dared not risk another move against her.

  Besides, Yin thought, she may yet prove useful.

  “I will find her,” Avalon said decisively. “Where I find her, I will also find him.”

  “That won’t be easy,” Yin said. “Alden disappeared from the Special Services register shortly after he left the Zone. We never reacquired the signal.”

  “His tracer implant?”

  “Neutralized. They could be anywhere by now.”

  “They wouldn’t have gone far,” Avalon said. “Alden would have to stop somewhere nearby to rid himself of the implant. Somewhere with the facilities to perform complex neural surgery.” She thought about it for a while longer. “What mode of transportation did they use to get out of the city?”

  “A cargo pulser. The Port Authority logs show it was bound for Montreal. Nobody was on board when it arrived.”

  “What about the airports?”

  “Our people are jacked into security systems all across the continent. So far, nobody has seen either one of them.”

  “And they won’t,” Avalon decided. “Alden is extremely familiar with your procedures. He won’t risk boarding any international flights, and he will stay off the Axis as much as possible to conceal his signature.” She took a breath. “He’s hiding now. He won’t come out until he’s ready to make his move.”

  Yin was intrigued. There was a current of obsession beneath the veneer of her logic, something Yin had never expected. He wondered how much of it was dedication to the cause, and how much of it was vengeance. In her own way, Avalon was very much a slave to her desires. Perhaps that explained her association with the Inru, which had always been a mystery to him.

  “What do you propose?”

  Avalon threw the empty hypospray at him. It landed in Yin’s lap.

  “Just get me a sensuit,” she said.

  Yin didn’t ask how she planned on getting out. “I can have one here in two hours,” he offered. “What about your injuries?”

  “Nothing a flesh barn can’t fix.”

  “Very well,” Yin said. “I will make the arrangements.”

  “I’ll also need transportation,” she added. “A hovercraft, waiting for me at LaGuardia. Have the Transit Authority in Montreal bag that cargo pulser until I can get up there and have a look at it.”

  “Of course.”

  “And I will do this alone, Yin,” Avalon warned. “No pilots, no partners—no one. If I catch anybody following me, I will kill them. I don’t care who it is.”

  “I understand.”

  “I hope you do.”

  She closed her eyes, the monitors dropping back off to comatose levels. Yin watched her for a time, feeling foolish for the way she had tricked him. He didn’t like it, any more than he liked her giving orders—but he resolved to tolerate her insolence so long as she got him closer to Alden.

  Avalon was correct in her assumptions regarding Heretic, but she was nowhere close to knowing the full story. In truth, the process she had spoken of was already at work. The data Yin had taken from Dex Marlowe’s files confirmed it. How far it had gone was a matter of speculation—which made locating Alden even more crucial. Heretic would see it, and she would show Alden, and when that happened there was no telling what Alden would do. At best, he would end his own life and be done with it.

  At worst, the consequences were unthinkable.

  Vortex was lost in the numerics.

  Crazy as it seemed, Cray was pleased to think of himself in those terms again. It was the life he had grown accustomed to as a hammerjack: being a permanent fugitive, forever riding the edge of getting caught, sifting through reams of stolen data to separate the gold from the dust. It was the high of becoming something other than yourself, something deeper than yourself, cobbled together from bits and pieces that floated in the logical void and came together under your direction. It was no wonder so many people became addicted to the life. To know that kind of control was to be the master of everything, a universe contained within a single domain.

  In the here and now, that domain consisted of the logs Cray downloaded from Lyssa. He had been immersed in them for the last few hours, studying the numbers that trickled out of the virtual display, proceeding on the faith that he would recognize what he was searching for if and when he finally saw it. The process was daunting. At any
given moment, there were at least 100 million elements at work within the bionucleic matrix, each one an independent component that performed a specific function; but that function could alter itself depending on the dictates of the matrix, creating a principle of uncertainty that was not unlike subatomic particles: by the time you get a look at it, the fundamentals have already changed. It was the very foundation of chaos logic, the engine that drove Lyssa’s mind. There was no predictability—only probability, which in a complex system would come together to create discernible patterns if taken as a whole.

  Taken separately, they were almost impossible to understand.

  Funky whistled, taking a seat next to Cray. He slurped on a straw poking out of a foil bag—homemade hooch, if the alcohol on his breath was an indicator. “Some code you got there, Vortex,” he said, handing Cray the bag. “This the stuff that makes Lyssa tick?”

  “A real peek under her skirt,” Cray answered, carefully taking a drag off the straw. The concoction reeked of ginger and rum, but the taste wasn’t bad at all. “The theory behind it is totally insane. You have to give their engineers credit, though. They made it work.”

  “That’s one way to look at it, I suppose.”

  “The Assembly used the term productive failure. The sad part is they think they can actually learn something from this.” He sighed, shaking his head tiredly. “They don’t know anything. They might as well be dealing with an alien intelligence, for all Lyssa has in common with the human mind. They created it—but they sure as hell can’t control it.”

  “You can’t control life, mate,” Funky said. “That’s the whole problem with this business. Machines cock things up well enough when people are in control. Start playing around with this—that’s when you’re asking for trouble. We got no business improving on the Lord’s handiwork.”

  “You didn’t strike me as the religious type, Funky,” Cray observed, passing the bag back to him.

  “God save the Queen,” Funky said, taking another swig. “So what are you looking for here?”

  “Damned if I know,” Cray admitted. “I’m trying to narrow the scope down to the security architecture. That’s where I think this whole thing got started. The hard part is finding evidence of an intrusion into the bionucleic matrix. Problem is, I can’t see any way past these countermeasures.” He flipped the display over to a graphic representation of the outer matrix, compiled from the mathematical model. “See this firewall structure? This, my man, is where protoviruses go to die. Conventional code strands can’t even exist in this kind of environment.”

  The matrix was flexible, expanding and contracting into a multitude of shapes. It seemed to be restless and breathing.

  “Sure looks alive,” Funky observed. “You can see how the Inru get worked up over this thing.”

  “Maybe,” Cray said dubiously, pointing out the delicate structures within the wall. “But this composition isn’t so different from the flash they designed. As genetic cousins, they’re pretty damned close—not more than a few genes apart. What they’ve created is only a slightly different variant of what they’re trying to destroy.”

  “Further blurring the line between man and machine,” Funky concluded. “We both become the same thing.”

  “Only some of us,” Cray interjected. “God only knows what guys like Yin would do with the rest. If the history of eugenics is any indication, we’re looking at an ugly future. Whole caste systems based on superintelligence, with regular old Homo sapiens falling a few rungs down the evolutionary ladder.” He sank back into his chair, appearing grim. “It’s hard to pick which one is scarier.”

  “You’re a real ray of sunshine, aren’t you, Vortex?”

  Cray laughed. “Occupational hazard.”

  “I try not to worry about too many things,” Funky said, finishing the last of his drink. “A man gets tired carrying around the burdens of the world all by himself. If I were you, I’d give it a rest.”

  “Easy for you to say. You don’t have that world floating around inside of you.”

  “Just relax, mate. We’ll have it out of you in no time.”

  “How’s the blood work going, anyway?”

  “Almost finished,” Funky told him. “Lea is back in the lab with the hookup. She’ll let us know as soon as the cultures are done. Girlfriend is very good in the kitchen.”

  Cray caught a glint of admiration in his eye when he spoke of Lea.

  “How long have you known her?”

  “I met her right after I got paroled,” he said. “We had a few mutual chums in the subculture. When I was looking to score some jack, Zoe put it all together.” He fell silent for a few moments, his memories fond but tainted by recent events. “Worked good for a long time. The three of us got pretty tight.”

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  “Don’t be,” Funky said. “Zoe knew that runners are never long for this world. She just loved to do it. The way she went down, that’s how she wanted it.”

  “Did Lea understand?”

  “She’s just the opposite,” he explained. “To her, being a hero isn’t part of the deal. She’s not in it for the thrill, or the money. She just does the job because it needs to be done, ya know? Like this war with the Inru. She could have let it go—but she was involved. She got them started. The way she sees it, that’s unfinished business.”

  So she takes on both sides by herself, Cray thought. Then she cloaks it all in this mercenary legend surrounding Heretic. It was the greatest sleight of hand he had ever seen. Lea had the whole Axis buzzing about her exploits, but nobody had the first real clue. No wonder she had been able to survive for so long.

  “What about you?” Funky asked. “You’re both coming at this thing from opposite ends. Where you see yourself going?”

  Cray’s eyes went back to the virtual display.

  “On the outside for a change,” he said, falling into the numbers, seeing in them the patterns of his own life. In those respects, he was not unlike Lyssa: constrained yet unbound, trapped in a prison of his own making. For the moment, at least, Cray had escaped. Lea had put him beyond the reach of the Collective, and as long as he was smart he might be able to disappear.

  Lyssa, however, didn’t have that option. She was subject to the rules of her existence, which mandated complete isolation. Her matrix had been designed with that distinction, making direct interface with the outside world an impossibility. Yet she had been in contact with a foreign intelligence. The logs proved it, as did her actions. If nothing from the outside could get in, what other possibilities remained?

  Not possibility. Probability.

  The idea was so incredibly simple, Cray beat up on himself for not thinking of it sooner.

  “Funky,” he said, not wanting to break his concentration, “do me a favor and slow down the interface. Then punch up a representation of the private side of the matrix.”

  “No problem.” He reduced it to one-quarter speed, feeding the numbers into another model and presenting the image in three dimensions. “You onto something?”

  “I’ve been looking at this the wrong way,” Cray said, studying the image carefully. “Security architecture is primarily concerned with threats originating from the Axis. That’s why all the heavy defensive stuff is deployed on the public side. The private side, however, is usually configured just to pass information requests from the internal network. If I’m right, the system Lyssa inhabits is constructed in roughly the same way.”

  “Doesn’t make much sense for an isolated system,” Funky pointed out, slowly reorienting the model so that they could get a panoramic view of the interior matrix. The walls were completely smooth, layered structures of code overlapping one another and leaving no space for potential gaps. “The engineers wouldn’t have left any open ports for that purpose. Anything that got out could contaminate the whole system.”

  “Yeah, but they forgot what they were dealing with.”

  Funky glanced over at Cray, his dark face made blue in the v
irtual light.

  “What’s that?”

  “A system that doesn’t want to be contained,” Cray answered. “Check it out.”

  Cray froze the interface, then got up and walked behind the construct. Reaching through the suspended image, he pointed toward a tiny blemish in the otherwise perfect crystalline surface of the matrix.

  Funky’s breath was still. “What the hell is that?”

  “Map those coordinates and augment,” Cray told him.

  An overlay grid appeared over the image. Funky performed a quick series of calculations, then zoomed in on the spot. It looked like a wound in the fleshy red structure of the matrix. Jagged and uneven, the break was no more than one or two code sequences long—a tear so insignificant, nobody would have thought of looking for it.

  “Now play it back,” Cray said. “Nanoframe time. Start out at ten per second, then double at thirty-second intervals.”

  Funky rolled the simulation. What was most incredible about the tear was its dynamic nature. It stayed open for only a few frames at a time, allowing a hyperfrequency bitstream of data to pass through before closing again. The process repeated itself again and again, each time at irregular intervals. Undetectable. Untraceable.

  Deliberate.

  After a few minutes, the simulation accelerated to the point that the exchange became too fast for the human eye to follow. At that rate, Lyssa would have been exchanging information at the rate of several trillion times per second.

  “That’s a mother of a leak, Vortex. What do you suppose it is?”

  Cray had no doubts. He had felt the draw when he was close to Lyssa, that need of hers to touch and to be touched. Difficult as it was for him to resist, to her it was a temptation beyond all reason—a biological imperative her designers had failed to reckon.

  “It’s her consciousness,” Cray said. “Reaching out.”

  Funky whistled in amazement.

  “Fucking A,” Cray affirmed, stepping away from the image. He circled back to his chair, leaning against it instead of sitting down. He didn’t know why, but the idea struck him as something of a vindication. “Pretty ironic, isn’t it? All along, the Assembly blames the Inru for breaking in. Now it looks like Lyssa was breaking out.”