It's the Brockton Bay of the future, and a girl named Taylor is willing to do whatever it takes to find her missing mother. (Not related to Cyberpunk 2020/2077)
Bug (Worm Cyberpunk AU)
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Chapter 1
- Location
- California
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The Bay was what locals called the three hundred square miles of steel-grey unincorporated sprawl between the Atlantic ocean and the Scrapheap.
It was a place where anything could happen, but where if you were lucky, nothing ever did. Boredom was two shifts at the local Zenmart followed by an hour of TV and eight hours of sleep. Excitement was when your activist mother walked into GenCom headquarters and never walked back out. Excitement was when the police refused to investigate, and sanctions were placed on your scrip account for asking too many questions. Excitement was misery and fear in equal measures.
Boredom was the safe option, and Taylor wanted so dearly to return to its embrace, but she couldn't. Not anymore, not when she was finally on the trail. Not when she was so close.
"You alright, Bug?" asked a voice in her ear. "I lost you there for a second."
Taylor clambered down the ladder, dropping down to street level. Down here, things were chaotic, messy, and loud. Pedestrians clambered around each other in an unending crowd, pushing and shoving over the grimy metal pavement in one enormous, throbbing mass. Dirt, grime, and trash littered the ground, traipsed into wet mush by passersby. People bumped shoulders and clamored amongst themselves, fighting to be heard over the echoing humdrum sounds of the city and the weighty pitter-patter of rain. Above, thousands of neon lights and advertising holographs lit up the night sky, flashing their displays where no one could ignore them.
"Yeah," she said, tapping her earpiece. "I'm good. Had a run-in with a scav on the train over."
"A Merchant?"
Taylor kept her head down and pushed on, passing rows of stalls manned by street vendors and hawkers, all shouting, competing for attention.
"No. Teeth, I think. Had a necklace of rat skulls and a decent amount of aftermarket chrome. Kept eyeing my bag."
"Yeah, that sounds like them. Guess you're getting close. You okay? No damage?"
"Fine," she said.
"Got away clean?"
She sighed. "I know how to lose a tail."
"Okay. Did you, though?"
She ducked around a corner, pulled her ratty hood down low over her face, and kept moving. Puddles splashed underfoot as she walked.
"Yeah. All clear."
"Good. Just needed to hear you say it. How far out are you now?"
Up ahead, there was a clearing. An endless stream of skycars zoomed back and forth in neat lanes, hundreds of feet above the ground. Raindrops bounced back and forth from windshield to windshield, splashing down to the street in a tumultuous cascade, showering everything below with fine mist.
"I'm at the Causeway. Ten minutes out."
"Be careful, Bug," the voice said. "The Teeth control every inch of this enclave, and they're territorial. You'll want to keep a low profile."
Taylor passed by a group of men huddled by a storefront window, with metal arms and masked faces, who laughed and leered as she walked by. She thought she might've glimpsed a skull badge hidden under a coat, the dull gray metal poking out through layers of fabric, but it could've just been her imagination.
"Little too late for that," she muttered.
"I'm serious, Bug. I don't like this."
"I'll be fine, Tattletale. Relax."
She stepped out onto a crossing, a little concrete footbridge passing over a rainwater runoff canal. The water was fast-moving, brown and murky.
"Look, I'll back you on this, but I'm telling you right now that it's a bad idea. One misstep, and you're going to find yourself knee deep in shit. You know the Teeth have half a dozen black hats on their team, and ten times that number of enforcers, right?"
"Enough with the commentary," Taylor said. "I'm paying you, aren't I?"
"It's not about the money. It's the fact that this is personal for you."
"If you had a problem with that, you shouldn't have taken my scrip."
"I didn't have a problem with it, until I watched you shred a Merchant network like a rabid dog. You were about as subtle as a brick through a window."
"I can do subtle. I just wasn't trying then."
"I really, really hope you're not just talking out of your ass, here. The Teeth are way higher on the totem pole. If you pull anything like that again, they'll be on you in seconds. What are you going to do if they find you, Bug?"
"Whatever I have to. But it won't come to that."
The crowd here was thinner; the street was less busy. The noise level in this area was more subdued. People whispered instead of shouting, huddled into dark corners. Dim fluorescent bulbs mounted to walls flickered dimly, adding their light to the sea of neon billboards overhead.
"You should've let us come with you."
"We've talked about this. Having five of us would've attracted attention."
"Grue, then. You should've let him come. He knows obfuscation better than anyone I've ever seen."
"I don't know him. I don't trust him."
"You don't know me, either. Not really."
Taylor bristled at that. "We've worked together. We've talked. You know my name, what I'm after."
"So what? You don't know my name. You don't know anything about me, and I don't really know anything about you, either, other than that you're one screwed up kid with a missing mom and a death wish."
She grit her teeth. "I'll go to someone else after tonight, then, if this bothers you so much. Get out of your hair."
"...Sorry. That's not necessary. I mean – I won't stop you, if that's what you want, but I'm willing to keep working with you. I'm just worried about you, Bug. Taylor. You're walking into the lion's den alone, with no backup plan."
"Lion's den? This is a condemned hotel. It's not one of their main safehouses. Security's going to be low."
"Whatever. You know what I mean. You're alone, and it's dangerous. Ties back into things being too personal for you – it's affecting your decision-making. "
"I'm not alone. I have you, don't I?"
Tattletale sighed. "For whatever that's worth."
At the end of the street was a ten-story building with a flashing vacancy sign stamped crookedly across its front, but no other identifying information. Its walls were cracked and mottled, and covered in graffiti. Its windows were yellowed, stained dark with soot and dirt. She made out a large figure standing by the door.
"I'm here," Taylor said. "I can see the hotel just ahead. There's a guard out front. Help me out?"
"Get me a picture."
"Full body, or just face?"
"Just his face."
Taylor ducked into an alleyway and pulled her phone. She poked it an inch out from the corner, zoomed in, and snapped a blurry picture of the man's head. Her phone was an old, outdated model, and the resulting image was low resolution.
"Sorry, it's not great quality. Does this work?"
"It'll do. I can clean up the picture if I have to. Give me a second."
Tattletale was an expert in social hacking, and it was one of the main reasons why Taylor had chosen to work with her. She could get into places that Taylor couldn't. They'd met online two months ago, back when Taylor's crusade was nothing more than hypothetical whisperings in the back of her mind. Tattletale was the first friendly face she'd met on the black hat forum that didn't immediately laugh her off.
"Got it. His name is Kent Hartnell, thirty-two years old, has an apartment rented under his name by the Docks, no official occupation listed. Known Teeth associate. Criminal record says he's been arrested for assault, petty theft, assault again, manslaughter, and corporate disservice."
"Corporate disservice?"
"Price of being outside the law these days. Everyone's got it on their record – you will, too, eventually. Rich 'crats love to tack it onto people's charges, no matter what they did. Kill a Protectorate director? Corporate disservice. Shoplift from a Zenmart? Corporate disservice. You have to pay them an extra fine if the charge sticks, so they throw it in as much as they can."
"Oh."
"Anyway – looks like he's got a car owned under his name, but he's three payments behind on the insurance. He's got an older brother and a younger sister, no parents, no pets–"
"Weapons?"
"I was getting to that. He's not licensed to carry, and he doesn't have any weapons registered under his name."
"But?"
"But, looking through his scrip account records, he transferred five grand from his account to an antiquities dealer in the markets a year ago. Antiquities dealer, meaning–"
"Black market," Taylor said. "I know."
"Yeah. This particular dealer has a rep for two things: drugs and guns. So either our boy Kent was buying a shit load of party favors that day, or he was in the market for some illegal firepower."
"Let's say it's a weapon. What does five thousand Gens get you?"
"Depends on the year. GenCom scrip fluctuates in value like a rollercoaster, you know that. At the time, give me a second… It looks like Gens were peaking, then. So probably surplus military stuff, then. Or Protectorate hand-me-downs. Either way, it's bad news."
"Right," Taylor said. "How do I get past him, without getting shot?"
"If you really have to go in there-"
"I do."
"Then I can handle it for you. Just watch."
Taylor peeked her head out around the corner, careful not to expose herself too much past the brickwork.
Nothing happened for a minute, but then the guard pulled out his phone. He stared at the screen, his expression displaying confusion, then anger, and then settling on panic. He stuffed the phone in his pocket and started running towards the parking lot by the far side of the building.
"He's gone," Taylor said. "What did you do?"
"Cloned his sister's cell, texted him that she was being chased by some creepy guys, and that he should come help fast."
Taylor started moving for the door, but paused. "That'll only hold up until he calls her."
"Already remotely powered off her phone. The idiot used her birthday as a passcode. You've got time, Bug, but someone else could take his place soon. You'd better get moving."
The hotel's lobby was empty when Taylor arrived. It was an ancient looking place, reminiscent of the buildings she'd seen in old movies. She pulled her damp hood away, and quickly slipped down the hall. She'd spent hours memorizing the layout the night before. Two lefts, then two rights, and then one more left, and down the stairs. The halls were messy, their splotched carpets stained with molding spots and the outlines of old takeout boxes.
She descended into the basement, where the air felt sticky and warm, and a single cheap haloflood lit the entire room. It was unguarded and abandoned. At the far wall sat a blocky machine, with dozens of twisted and tangled cables stretching out into the ceiling.
"I see it," Taylor said. "Relay server."
"Lemme see."
A ping on her contact lens notified her of an incoming video request. She blinked to accept.
"Alright, got visuals. Let's see what we've got here."
Taylor approached the server, keeping her eyes on it so that Tattletale could see. Blinking lights indicated it was still running.
"God, you're joking, right?" she asked. "That thing is ancient. It's probably got viruses in it older than your grandparents. You're really going to jack into that?"
"Have to. I need the footage."
"And if a worm eats your brain or something?"
"It won't."
"But if it does?"
"Tattletale," she said, sighing. "Will it work?"
"Let me see the serial number."
Taylor looked for it, scanning the machine up and down, until she finally found an old label printed on the side.
"Yeah, it should work. It's a Turing-Myocom server - eight generations old, but your interface should be compatible."
Taylor crouched down beside the machine. She opened her bag, retrieving a plastic block with two cables – her portable Link. It was the key piece of wetware that let runners like her interface directly into a network. One cable was meant to plug into a computer, and the other cable was supposed to go into an implant, usually embedded into the spine.
She plugged one cable into the server, and held the other in her hand. "I'll try to network you into the cameras as soon as I can. If anyone comes down here, let me know."
"Be careful."
"Sure."
She jabbed the thick cable into her neck, and the moment the chrome touched her spine, her vision exploded in lights and sound.
And then she was in. She felt power thrum with every movement of her fingers.
A digital world unfolded before her, intricate lines criss-crossing infinitely into the horizon. The wiring was old, but still usable. If she focused on one, she could follow it from one machine to the next.
The closest, shortest lines had to be cameras. The CCTV network was plugged right into the relay server, so if she followed it, she could subvert it.
Taylor reached out for her swarm, pulling thousands of instances of her simple attack programs from the secure drive attached to her Link. She sent them into the network, searching for the video cameras. In less than a minute, she had control.
It was child's play when she was already physically inside the building. She was already behind the walls.
"I'm sending you the cameras," Taylor said. "Moving onto the network drives, now."
"Alright. I just got it. Everything's clear for now."
She sent her swarm into the toughest part of the network, a hardened machine covered in ICE. It was like a virtual safe – heavily armored, unless you had a key. Her drones skittered around its surface, searching for a weakness, but found none.
"Shit," Taylor said.
"What? What is it?"
"Long-term storage repo is completely locked down. Thick ICE. My swarm could brute force it, but–"
"But it's loud, and it'd set off alarms."
"Yeah. So either we find a key, or I'll have to start breaking things."
"Don't. We'll find a key."
Taylor pulled up feeds from every machine in the building, crawling through them looking for usable data. The majority of her feeds pointed at old residents' computers, and she dropped those - they hadn't been used for years, and wouldn't have anything relevant. The few office machines held some promise.
"Tattletale," she said. "Receptionist's computer is still logged into an email account."
"I'm looking now. Hold on, searching for anything related to passwords." And then Tattletale cursed. "No, nothing here."
Taylor flitted through the other office computers.
"Backroom machine is logged in, too. Different email."
"Looking, looking. Okay, I got something. An outgoing message asking about a password change. The reply was deleted, though."
"Can you recover it?"
"Maybe. Give me some time."
Taylor continued to search while her partner worked. She found dozens of old text documents – unsent letters, incomplete stories, old notes - but none of it was what she needed. She grit her teeth. They were wasting time.
"Shit. Taylor, you need to jack out, now!"
"Why? What's going on?"
"Guard coming your way. I don't think he suspects anything, but he's going down to the basement."
Taylor hissed and pulled the Link.
It was dizzying, coming back to meatspace. Every time she came out, she felt nauseous, and she didn't know how to prevent it. Supposedly certain kinds of tea helped, but she'd tried them all, and she still felt sick every time.
She shoved the link back into her bag, and slung it over her shoulders. If she listened closely, she could make out distant footsteps that slowly grew louder.
"Where do I go?"
"Only one set of stairs up. You're going to have to hide. I think I see a locker on your right side? Might fit."
Taylor crept over to the metal cabinet, tried to open it, but met resistance. "Locked."
"Well, find something else, and hurry!"
She turned and saw a freezer. It was where the hotel stored their ice, she assumed. She lifted the lid, and a shock of cold blasted her face. With a grimace, she climbed inside, stepping on bags of ice. The lid closed over her head, and then she was engulfed in darkness and cold.
"Hold your breath for as long as you can, Bug. These things are built to be airtight, so you're going to have to hold out and conserve as much air as possible. I'll tell you when it's safe."
Taylor held her breath for a minute, until her lungs were straining and she couldn't handle it anymore, and then she released. Then she sucked in some more air, and started over.
"Hold on, hold on. Not yet, he's still there." Tattletale was trying to be comforting, she knew, but it did very little to fight the chill in her lungs.
It went on for what felt like hours, and the cold crept into her fingers, freezing the joints. Her face stung, and hurt when she moved it. The worst part was that it wasn't all ice – some of it was already melted, and the slush soaked into her socks and her pants.
"Not yet. I'm sorry, I know it hurts."
She felt like it was stabbing her, little icy needles jabbing into her. And then the freezing began to burn, and it was like she was aflame in her little coffin.
"Not yet, not yet. I'm sorry, Taylor, just hold on. You're almost through."
It was like drowning, she thought idly. Not in the slush, but in the cold, like the cold itself was water, and she was sinking into it, but she couldn't move her body to swim.
"Okay, he's gone! You can come out now."
Taylor lifted her arm, pushing against the lid. It was painful, and slow going, but eventually she managed to get it open.
She clambered out, and fell to her knees, shivering in the damp basement air.
"Are you okay?"
"Y-yeah," she managed.
"You were in there for almost thirty minutes, Bug. Are you sure you're alright?"
"Yes. W-what was h-he doing?"
"I don't know. He was on his phone. Maybe he was on a break?"
Taylor stumbled her way back to the server.
"What the hell are you doing? You can't go back in in this condition!"
"H-have to." She fumbled with her bag, slowly pulling out her Link, and plugged the cable back in. Her fingers slipped around the plastic shroud, shaking, but she managed it.
"Bug, you could die!"
She jammed the other cable into her neck, and then she was back inside the network.
It hurt, this time. It hurt a lot.
It was part of how the Link worked – it manipulated the brain into feeling representations of digital constructs, and it needed to amplify sensations to achieve a convincing simulation.
That meant it had the side effect of amplifying pain. Taylor felt like she was back in the ice, except this time it was flooding her mind, sending eddies of hail down her veins. It took all her effort to keep herself from screaming.
Eventually, mercifully, the pain subsided.
"-lor! Are you okay? Talk to me!"
"I'm okay," she said. Her voice was small.
"What the fuck was that?"
"Had to do it," she said.
"Your vitals were all over the place! You almost flatlined for a second!"
"Tattletale," she said, catching her breath. "Let's finish up."
"I was about to tell you, before you plugged back in and almost killed yourself – I couldn't get the email. Whatever they did, it's completely gone. No cached backups anywhere, no scraps left to put the pieces back together. So just unplug, okay? Let's go home. We can come back to this another time, once we've done more prep work."
No. Taylor needed that data, and she needed it now. There was no guarantee it would still be here in a day or a week. There was only one option. She reached out for her swarm, and sent the command to attack the secure drive with everything she had.
"Bug, what the hell are you doing?"
Millions of drones crashed into the ICE, over and over again. It took a minute, but eventually, it began to crack. Alarm signals ran out, following lines leading out to the horizon.
"Goddammit, Taylor, stop!"
The ICE shattered, and her swarm flooded inside, reading out every piece of data that it could find. There were hundreds of thousands of files, some dating back over fifteen years.
"You're going to get yourself killed over this! You're going to die over a woman that's probably dead already!"
Tattletale was wrong. Her mom wasn't dead, and Taylor was sure of it. She began the download, pulling data bit by bit into her Link.
And then she faltered. There was a presence inside the machine, connected from a remote server.
Someone was watching her.
"Taylor, jack out now! They're onto you!"
Her observer was encrypting the data, turning it useless. She had to salvage whatever she could get before they could get to it.
A message floated out into the server out into open space.
I see you.
Taylor moved faster. There was a good chance that nothing would be salvageable by the end, but she had to try anyway. She dedicated a part of her swarm to attacking her opponent directly, striking at his Link with her drones. His avatar's form shifted, grew larger. He easily swatted them aside.
"Taylor, that's Animos! You can't beat him, just jack out!"
"Don't need to beat him," Taylor said.
Animos approached her steadily, batting away her drones. She set up loose connections, digital tripwires to slow him down. Animos stumbled, but kept moving. He howled, letting out a wave that shut off half her swarm in a single blast.
He had some kind of disabling program that could proliferate from node to node of her swarm, like a ricocheting blast of sound. It was the perfect counter to her speciality.
"Taylor, listen to me! You need to get out of there right now! There are people coming for you!"
"How much time?"
She was almost done – the download was at eighty-five percent.
"Se- g-s -nto the front door!"
"What was that? You're breaking up."
"G- to th- roo-"
Get to the roof, she translated.
Animos sent out another wave, and nearly her entire swarm was wiped out. Only a few stragglers survived, too few to protect her. He lept at her, aiming for her Link. If he hit it in the right way, it would kill her instantly, fry her brain with an overload of current.
A split second before he reached her, the download finally completed, and without hesitation, Taylor pulled the Link. She dropped back into the real world, still shivering from the cold. She staggered, feeling the nausea hit her again.
That was far too close.
"Tattletale?"
No response. She slipped her Link into her bag, and lurched to her feet. She started moving for the stairs, limping at first, but as the feeling returned to her legs, she began to walk faster and faster, until finally she could run. It still hurt, like little pins tearing into her, but she could run. Adrenaline surged through her, dulling the pain.
Tattletale had said to go up to the roof, so she went for the stairwell. Luckily for her, the Teeth guards hadn't reached it yet.
Taylor climbed the stairs two steps at a time, her hand cradling the rail as she moved. She winced at the cold metal, but held firm. She couldn't afford to slip up for even a second, or they'd find her. Frenzied voices called out to each other from below, echoing up through the stairwell.
Her pursuers seemed to still be sweeping the first floor, so once she got to the roof, she'd be safe for a while.
How was she supposed to get off the roof, though?
After ten flights of stairs, she stepped out into the rain, panting, struggling to breathe. She found herself on a dirty concrete floor covered in soggy cigarette butts, and the heavy downpour soaked her into the fabric of her coat. Taylor shivered, pushing herself to jog over to a rooftop air conditioning unit. She slumped down behind the box, feeling her momentary burst of energy leave her. It was over.
She couldn't see a way off the roof that didn't involve jumping.
Skycars flew through the night sky far above, and regular cars sped down the streets below. The neon holographs glowed from the impossibly tall skyscrapers, drowning out the stars. The city around her seemed almost peaceful, as if nothing was happening at all. She blinked the rain out of her eyes, slowly catching her breath.
That was the Bay: peacefully boring, unless you were as unlucky as Taylor was. She wished that she was up there, in the lights and the sky - anywhere but here.
The shouting of the guards grew louder. They'd be onto her any minute now.
"Tattletale," she said. "Can you hear me?"
Still no response.
She cradled her Link close to her chest. Stored inside was maybe a clue to finding her mom. Maybe, she thought, Tattletale could find it, take up her mission. Maybe Tattletale would avenge her and save her mom.
And then she felt like laughing. They weren't friends. They barely knew each other. It would never happen.
Her mom's disappearance would remain unsolved, and she'd die fruitlessly on the rooftop of an abandoned hotel.
The Teeth bursted out onto the roof, and she didn't dare look.
She could hear wet footsteps splash through puddles as they moved, sweeping down the walk space. In a few seconds, they'd find her, and it would all be over. All they had to do was look behind the air conditioning unit.
Taylor clutched the bag close, praying that they wouldn't shoot when they found her.
And then, as if by magic, a skycar dropped down from above, slamming down towards the roof. It was a massive, heavily armored thing, shaped like a van, but covered in metal plates and spikes. Its jets buffeted the rain around it. A gun turret was mounted onto its roof, which turned and pointed towards where Taylor assumed the guards were.
The rooftop fell into complete chaos as the skycar opened fire, tearing chunks out of the concrete. Screams filled the air, mixing with gunshots and splashes. It was incoherent, mostly, except for a few words here and there.
"Stairs! Down!" someone shouted.
Taylor was still hidden behind the air conditioning unit. She wondered if someone would hear the shooting and call the Protectorate - but then she thought about it, and figured that nobody in this part of town would bother calling the Protectorate, and even if someone did, they probably wouldn't bother showing up.
The skycar's door slid open, and a muscular girl with short auburn hair peeked out.
It was difficult to hear her over the gunfire, but the message was obvious. "Get in!" she shouted.
Taylor jumped to her feet, holding her bag tight, and ran. The rooftop was slick, and she was afraid she'd slip and fall with each step. Gunshots whizzed past her, barely missing her by inches. Her heart raced. After what felt like an eternity, she closed the gap and jumped into the skycar. She landed face first into the metal surface, tumbling over from the momentum.
The girl slid the door behind her, and bullets plinked off the metal, ricocheting off the armor. She stepped back into the driver's seat, and Taylor felt the ground jolt beneath her as they took off.
And then they were safe. In the sky, nobody could follow them.
It took her a long time to catch her breath. She felt her nerves on edge. It was an entirely different kind of cold than the ice had been.
The inside of the skycar was spartan. There were two seats in front, and an open space in the back, with a desk mounted to the wall. A set of hand tools were strapped against the desk – wrenches, screwdrivers, and a hammer.
Taylor glanced at her savior, who hadn't spoken a word since they'd taken off.
"Thanks," Taylor said.
She gave a noncommittal grunt.
"Did Tattletale send you?"
"Mm."
"Did she tell you who I am, or-"
"Bug," the driver said. "I know. Jacket off."
Taylor wiped the rain off her face, and shrugged off her coat. Instantly, she felt a lot warmer. They sat in silence. After a long while, the driver spoke again. "I'm Rachel," she said.
A real name. That was rare, in this line of business.
"Thanks, Rachel."
Rachel didn't say anything else, and the conversation lapsed. Taylor relaxed, leaning against the wall of the skycar, holding her bag closely.
She'd put all her hopes into this mission, and it was a long shot. The Teeth had a safehouse in a building next to GenCom's headquarters, and the hotel she'd just raided had contained a relay server that might've saved a copy of their security footage. If she was lucky, really lucky, there would be exterior camera footage from three years ago, when her mom had entered the GenCom campus and had never come home. She might catch a glimpse of a clue.
It was a start.
Her mom wasn't dead, whatever Tattletale thought. Taylor knew she was alive. She knew it, because a month after her mom had disappeared, she'd received a letter with personal details only her mom knew, addressed to her little owl.
She'd gone over the letter hundreds, thousands of times, had run it through analysis programs comparing it to other things her mom had written, and every time she came out with the same conclusion.
Her mom was out there somewhere, and Taylor was going to find her, no matter what it took.
It was a place where anything could happen, but where if you were lucky, nothing ever did. Boredom was two shifts at the local Zenmart followed by an hour of TV and eight hours of sleep. Excitement was when your activist mother walked into GenCom headquarters and never walked back out. Excitement was when the police refused to investigate, and sanctions were placed on your scrip account for asking too many questions. Excitement was misery and fear in equal measures.
Boredom was the safe option, and Taylor wanted so dearly to return to its embrace, but she couldn't. Not anymore, not when she was finally on the trail. Not when she was so close.
"You alright, Bug?" asked a voice in her ear. "I lost you there for a second."
Taylor clambered down the ladder, dropping down to street level. Down here, things were chaotic, messy, and loud. Pedestrians clambered around each other in an unending crowd, pushing and shoving over the grimy metal pavement in one enormous, throbbing mass. Dirt, grime, and trash littered the ground, traipsed into wet mush by passersby. People bumped shoulders and clamored amongst themselves, fighting to be heard over the echoing humdrum sounds of the city and the weighty pitter-patter of rain. Above, thousands of neon lights and advertising holographs lit up the night sky, flashing their displays where no one could ignore them.
"Yeah," she said, tapping her earpiece. "I'm good. Had a run-in with a scav on the train over."
"A Merchant?"
Taylor kept her head down and pushed on, passing rows of stalls manned by street vendors and hawkers, all shouting, competing for attention.
"No. Teeth, I think. Had a necklace of rat skulls and a decent amount of aftermarket chrome. Kept eyeing my bag."
"Yeah, that sounds like them. Guess you're getting close. You okay? No damage?"
"Fine," she said.
"Got away clean?"
She sighed. "I know how to lose a tail."
"Okay. Did you, though?"
She ducked around a corner, pulled her ratty hood down low over her face, and kept moving. Puddles splashed underfoot as she walked.
"Yeah. All clear."
"Good. Just needed to hear you say it. How far out are you now?"
Up ahead, there was a clearing. An endless stream of skycars zoomed back and forth in neat lanes, hundreds of feet above the ground. Raindrops bounced back and forth from windshield to windshield, splashing down to the street in a tumultuous cascade, showering everything below with fine mist.
"I'm at the Causeway. Ten minutes out."
"Be careful, Bug," the voice said. "The Teeth control every inch of this enclave, and they're territorial. You'll want to keep a low profile."
Taylor passed by a group of men huddled by a storefront window, with metal arms and masked faces, who laughed and leered as she walked by. She thought she might've glimpsed a skull badge hidden under a coat, the dull gray metal poking out through layers of fabric, but it could've just been her imagination.
"Little too late for that," she muttered.
"I'm serious, Bug. I don't like this."
"I'll be fine, Tattletale. Relax."
She stepped out onto a crossing, a little concrete footbridge passing over a rainwater runoff canal. The water was fast-moving, brown and murky.
"Look, I'll back you on this, but I'm telling you right now that it's a bad idea. One misstep, and you're going to find yourself knee deep in shit. You know the Teeth have half a dozen black hats on their team, and ten times that number of enforcers, right?"
"Enough with the commentary," Taylor said. "I'm paying you, aren't I?"
"It's not about the money. It's the fact that this is personal for you."
"If you had a problem with that, you shouldn't have taken my scrip."
"I didn't have a problem with it, until I watched you shred a Merchant network like a rabid dog. You were about as subtle as a brick through a window."
"I can do subtle. I just wasn't trying then."
"I really, really hope you're not just talking out of your ass, here. The Teeth are way higher on the totem pole. If you pull anything like that again, they'll be on you in seconds. What are you going to do if they find you, Bug?"
"Whatever I have to. But it won't come to that."
The crowd here was thinner; the street was less busy. The noise level in this area was more subdued. People whispered instead of shouting, huddled into dark corners. Dim fluorescent bulbs mounted to walls flickered dimly, adding their light to the sea of neon billboards overhead.
"You should've let us come with you."
"We've talked about this. Having five of us would've attracted attention."
"Grue, then. You should've let him come. He knows obfuscation better than anyone I've ever seen."
"I don't know him. I don't trust him."
"You don't know me, either. Not really."
Taylor bristled at that. "We've worked together. We've talked. You know my name, what I'm after."
"So what? You don't know my name. You don't know anything about me, and I don't really know anything about you, either, other than that you're one screwed up kid with a missing mom and a death wish."
She grit her teeth. "I'll go to someone else after tonight, then, if this bothers you so much. Get out of your hair."
"...Sorry. That's not necessary. I mean – I won't stop you, if that's what you want, but I'm willing to keep working with you. I'm just worried about you, Bug. Taylor. You're walking into the lion's den alone, with no backup plan."
"Lion's den? This is a condemned hotel. It's not one of their main safehouses. Security's going to be low."
"Whatever. You know what I mean. You're alone, and it's dangerous. Ties back into things being too personal for you – it's affecting your decision-making. "
"I'm not alone. I have you, don't I?"
Tattletale sighed. "For whatever that's worth."
At the end of the street was a ten-story building with a flashing vacancy sign stamped crookedly across its front, but no other identifying information. Its walls were cracked and mottled, and covered in graffiti. Its windows were yellowed, stained dark with soot and dirt. She made out a large figure standing by the door.
"I'm here," Taylor said. "I can see the hotel just ahead. There's a guard out front. Help me out?"
"Get me a picture."
"Full body, or just face?"
"Just his face."
Taylor ducked into an alleyway and pulled her phone. She poked it an inch out from the corner, zoomed in, and snapped a blurry picture of the man's head. Her phone was an old, outdated model, and the resulting image was low resolution.
"Sorry, it's not great quality. Does this work?"
"It'll do. I can clean up the picture if I have to. Give me a second."
Tattletale was an expert in social hacking, and it was one of the main reasons why Taylor had chosen to work with her. She could get into places that Taylor couldn't. They'd met online two months ago, back when Taylor's crusade was nothing more than hypothetical whisperings in the back of her mind. Tattletale was the first friendly face she'd met on the black hat forum that didn't immediately laugh her off.
"Got it. His name is Kent Hartnell, thirty-two years old, has an apartment rented under his name by the Docks, no official occupation listed. Known Teeth associate. Criminal record says he's been arrested for assault, petty theft, assault again, manslaughter, and corporate disservice."
"Corporate disservice?"
"Price of being outside the law these days. Everyone's got it on their record – you will, too, eventually. Rich 'crats love to tack it onto people's charges, no matter what they did. Kill a Protectorate director? Corporate disservice. Shoplift from a Zenmart? Corporate disservice. You have to pay them an extra fine if the charge sticks, so they throw it in as much as they can."
"Oh."
"Anyway – looks like he's got a car owned under his name, but he's three payments behind on the insurance. He's got an older brother and a younger sister, no parents, no pets–"
"Weapons?"
"I was getting to that. He's not licensed to carry, and he doesn't have any weapons registered under his name."
"But?"
"But, looking through his scrip account records, he transferred five grand from his account to an antiquities dealer in the markets a year ago. Antiquities dealer, meaning–"
"Black market," Taylor said. "I know."
"Yeah. This particular dealer has a rep for two things: drugs and guns. So either our boy Kent was buying a shit load of party favors that day, or he was in the market for some illegal firepower."
"Let's say it's a weapon. What does five thousand Gens get you?"
"Depends on the year. GenCom scrip fluctuates in value like a rollercoaster, you know that. At the time, give me a second… It looks like Gens were peaking, then. So probably surplus military stuff, then. Or Protectorate hand-me-downs. Either way, it's bad news."
"Right," Taylor said. "How do I get past him, without getting shot?"
"If you really have to go in there-"
"I do."
"Then I can handle it for you. Just watch."
Taylor peeked her head out around the corner, careful not to expose herself too much past the brickwork.
Nothing happened for a minute, but then the guard pulled out his phone. He stared at the screen, his expression displaying confusion, then anger, and then settling on panic. He stuffed the phone in his pocket and started running towards the parking lot by the far side of the building.
"He's gone," Taylor said. "What did you do?"
"Cloned his sister's cell, texted him that she was being chased by some creepy guys, and that he should come help fast."
Taylor started moving for the door, but paused. "That'll only hold up until he calls her."
"Already remotely powered off her phone. The idiot used her birthday as a passcode. You've got time, Bug, but someone else could take his place soon. You'd better get moving."
The hotel's lobby was empty when Taylor arrived. It was an ancient looking place, reminiscent of the buildings she'd seen in old movies. She pulled her damp hood away, and quickly slipped down the hall. She'd spent hours memorizing the layout the night before. Two lefts, then two rights, and then one more left, and down the stairs. The halls were messy, their splotched carpets stained with molding spots and the outlines of old takeout boxes.
She descended into the basement, where the air felt sticky and warm, and a single cheap haloflood lit the entire room. It was unguarded and abandoned. At the far wall sat a blocky machine, with dozens of twisted and tangled cables stretching out into the ceiling.
"I see it," Taylor said. "Relay server."
"Lemme see."
A ping on her contact lens notified her of an incoming video request. She blinked to accept.
"Alright, got visuals. Let's see what we've got here."
Taylor approached the server, keeping her eyes on it so that Tattletale could see. Blinking lights indicated it was still running.
"God, you're joking, right?" she asked. "That thing is ancient. It's probably got viruses in it older than your grandparents. You're really going to jack into that?"
"Have to. I need the footage."
"And if a worm eats your brain or something?"
"It won't."
"But if it does?"
"Tattletale," she said, sighing. "Will it work?"
"Let me see the serial number."
Taylor looked for it, scanning the machine up and down, until she finally found an old label printed on the side.
"Yeah, it should work. It's a Turing-Myocom server - eight generations old, but your interface should be compatible."
Taylor crouched down beside the machine. She opened her bag, retrieving a plastic block with two cables – her portable Link. It was the key piece of wetware that let runners like her interface directly into a network. One cable was meant to plug into a computer, and the other cable was supposed to go into an implant, usually embedded into the spine.
She plugged one cable into the server, and held the other in her hand. "I'll try to network you into the cameras as soon as I can. If anyone comes down here, let me know."
"Be careful."
"Sure."
She jabbed the thick cable into her neck, and the moment the chrome touched her spine, her vision exploded in lights and sound.
And then she was in. She felt power thrum with every movement of her fingers.
A digital world unfolded before her, intricate lines criss-crossing infinitely into the horizon. The wiring was old, but still usable. If she focused on one, she could follow it from one machine to the next.
The closest, shortest lines had to be cameras. The CCTV network was plugged right into the relay server, so if she followed it, she could subvert it.
Taylor reached out for her swarm, pulling thousands of instances of her simple attack programs from the secure drive attached to her Link. She sent them into the network, searching for the video cameras. In less than a minute, she had control.
It was child's play when she was already physically inside the building. She was already behind the walls.
"I'm sending you the cameras," Taylor said. "Moving onto the network drives, now."
"Alright. I just got it. Everything's clear for now."
She sent her swarm into the toughest part of the network, a hardened machine covered in ICE. It was like a virtual safe – heavily armored, unless you had a key. Her drones skittered around its surface, searching for a weakness, but found none.
"Shit," Taylor said.
"What? What is it?"
"Long-term storage repo is completely locked down. Thick ICE. My swarm could brute force it, but–"
"But it's loud, and it'd set off alarms."
"Yeah. So either we find a key, or I'll have to start breaking things."
"Don't. We'll find a key."
Taylor pulled up feeds from every machine in the building, crawling through them looking for usable data. The majority of her feeds pointed at old residents' computers, and she dropped those - they hadn't been used for years, and wouldn't have anything relevant. The few office machines held some promise.
"Tattletale," she said. "Receptionist's computer is still logged into an email account."
"I'm looking now. Hold on, searching for anything related to passwords." And then Tattletale cursed. "No, nothing here."
Taylor flitted through the other office computers.
"Backroom machine is logged in, too. Different email."
"Looking, looking. Okay, I got something. An outgoing message asking about a password change. The reply was deleted, though."
"Can you recover it?"
"Maybe. Give me some time."
Taylor continued to search while her partner worked. She found dozens of old text documents – unsent letters, incomplete stories, old notes - but none of it was what she needed. She grit her teeth. They were wasting time.
"Shit. Taylor, you need to jack out, now!"
"Why? What's going on?"
"Guard coming your way. I don't think he suspects anything, but he's going down to the basement."
Taylor hissed and pulled the Link.
It was dizzying, coming back to meatspace. Every time she came out, she felt nauseous, and she didn't know how to prevent it. Supposedly certain kinds of tea helped, but she'd tried them all, and she still felt sick every time.
She shoved the link back into her bag, and slung it over her shoulders. If she listened closely, she could make out distant footsteps that slowly grew louder.
"Where do I go?"
"Only one set of stairs up. You're going to have to hide. I think I see a locker on your right side? Might fit."
Taylor crept over to the metal cabinet, tried to open it, but met resistance. "Locked."
"Well, find something else, and hurry!"
She turned and saw a freezer. It was where the hotel stored their ice, she assumed. She lifted the lid, and a shock of cold blasted her face. With a grimace, she climbed inside, stepping on bags of ice. The lid closed over her head, and then she was engulfed in darkness and cold.
"Hold your breath for as long as you can, Bug. These things are built to be airtight, so you're going to have to hold out and conserve as much air as possible. I'll tell you when it's safe."
Taylor held her breath for a minute, until her lungs were straining and she couldn't handle it anymore, and then she released. Then she sucked in some more air, and started over.
"Hold on, hold on. Not yet, he's still there." Tattletale was trying to be comforting, she knew, but it did very little to fight the chill in her lungs.
It went on for what felt like hours, and the cold crept into her fingers, freezing the joints. Her face stung, and hurt when she moved it. The worst part was that it wasn't all ice – some of it was already melted, and the slush soaked into her socks and her pants.
"Not yet. I'm sorry, I know it hurts."
She felt like it was stabbing her, little icy needles jabbing into her. And then the freezing began to burn, and it was like she was aflame in her little coffin.
"Not yet, not yet. I'm sorry, Taylor, just hold on. You're almost through."
It was like drowning, she thought idly. Not in the slush, but in the cold, like the cold itself was water, and she was sinking into it, but she couldn't move her body to swim.
"Okay, he's gone! You can come out now."
Taylor lifted her arm, pushing against the lid. It was painful, and slow going, but eventually she managed to get it open.
She clambered out, and fell to her knees, shivering in the damp basement air.
"Are you okay?"
"Y-yeah," she managed.
"You were in there for almost thirty minutes, Bug. Are you sure you're alright?"
"Yes. W-what was h-he doing?"
"I don't know. He was on his phone. Maybe he was on a break?"
Taylor stumbled her way back to the server.
"What the hell are you doing? You can't go back in in this condition!"
"H-have to." She fumbled with her bag, slowly pulling out her Link, and plugged the cable back in. Her fingers slipped around the plastic shroud, shaking, but she managed it.
"Bug, you could die!"
She jammed the other cable into her neck, and then she was back inside the network.
It hurt, this time. It hurt a lot.
It was part of how the Link worked – it manipulated the brain into feeling representations of digital constructs, and it needed to amplify sensations to achieve a convincing simulation.
That meant it had the side effect of amplifying pain. Taylor felt like she was back in the ice, except this time it was flooding her mind, sending eddies of hail down her veins. It took all her effort to keep herself from screaming.
Eventually, mercifully, the pain subsided.
"-lor! Are you okay? Talk to me!"
"I'm okay," she said. Her voice was small.
"What the fuck was that?"
"Had to do it," she said.
"Your vitals were all over the place! You almost flatlined for a second!"
"Tattletale," she said, catching her breath. "Let's finish up."
"I was about to tell you, before you plugged back in and almost killed yourself – I couldn't get the email. Whatever they did, it's completely gone. No cached backups anywhere, no scraps left to put the pieces back together. So just unplug, okay? Let's go home. We can come back to this another time, once we've done more prep work."
No. Taylor needed that data, and she needed it now. There was no guarantee it would still be here in a day or a week. There was only one option. She reached out for her swarm, and sent the command to attack the secure drive with everything she had.
"Bug, what the hell are you doing?"
Millions of drones crashed into the ICE, over and over again. It took a minute, but eventually, it began to crack. Alarm signals ran out, following lines leading out to the horizon.
"Goddammit, Taylor, stop!"
The ICE shattered, and her swarm flooded inside, reading out every piece of data that it could find. There were hundreds of thousands of files, some dating back over fifteen years.
"You're going to get yourself killed over this! You're going to die over a woman that's probably dead already!"
Tattletale was wrong. Her mom wasn't dead, and Taylor was sure of it. She began the download, pulling data bit by bit into her Link.
And then she faltered. There was a presence inside the machine, connected from a remote server.
Someone was watching her.
"Taylor, jack out now! They're onto you!"
Her observer was encrypting the data, turning it useless. She had to salvage whatever she could get before they could get to it.
A message floated out into the server out into open space.
I see you.
Taylor moved faster. There was a good chance that nothing would be salvageable by the end, but she had to try anyway. She dedicated a part of her swarm to attacking her opponent directly, striking at his Link with her drones. His avatar's form shifted, grew larger. He easily swatted them aside.
"Taylor, that's Animos! You can't beat him, just jack out!"
"Don't need to beat him," Taylor said.
Animos approached her steadily, batting away her drones. She set up loose connections, digital tripwires to slow him down. Animos stumbled, but kept moving. He howled, letting out a wave that shut off half her swarm in a single blast.
He had some kind of disabling program that could proliferate from node to node of her swarm, like a ricocheting blast of sound. It was the perfect counter to her speciality.
"Taylor, listen to me! You need to get out of there right now! There are people coming for you!"
"How much time?"
She was almost done – the download was at eighty-five percent.
"Se- g-s -nto the front door!"
"What was that? You're breaking up."
"G- to th- roo-"
Get to the roof, she translated.
Animos sent out another wave, and nearly her entire swarm was wiped out. Only a few stragglers survived, too few to protect her. He lept at her, aiming for her Link. If he hit it in the right way, it would kill her instantly, fry her brain with an overload of current.
A split second before he reached her, the download finally completed, and without hesitation, Taylor pulled the Link. She dropped back into the real world, still shivering from the cold. She staggered, feeling the nausea hit her again.
That was far too close.
"Tattletale?"
No response. She slipped her Link into her bag, and lurched to her feet. She started moving for the stairs, limping at first, but as the feeling returned to her legs, she began to walk faster and faster, until finally she could run. It still hurt, like little pins tearing into her, but she could run. Adrenaline surged through her, dulling the pain.
Tattletale had said to go up to the roof, so she went for the stairwell. Luckily for her, the Teeth guards hadn't reached it yet.
Taylor climbed the stairs two steps at a time, her hand cradling the rail as she moved. She winced at the cold metal, but held firm. She couldn't afford to slip up for even a second, or they'd find her. Frenzied voices called out to each other from below, echoing up through the stairwell.
Her pursuers seemed to still be sweeping the first floor, so once she got to the roof, she'd be safe for a while.
How was she supposed to get off the roof, though?
After ten flights of stairs, she stepped out into the rain, panting, struggling to breathe. She found herself on a dirty concrete floor covered in soggy cigarette butts, and the heavy downpour soaked her into the fabric of her coat. Taylor shivered, pushing herself to jog over to a rooftop air conditioning unit. She slumped down behind the box, feeling her momentary burst of energy leave her. It was over.
She couldn't see a way off the roof that didn't involve jumping.
Skycars flew through the night sky far above, and regular cars sped down the streets below. The neon holographs glowed from the impossibly tall skyscrapers, drowning out the stars. The city around her seemed almost peaceful, as if nothing was happening at all. She blinked the rain out of her eyes, slowly catching her breath.
That was the Bay: peacefully boring, unless you were as unlucky as Taylor was. She wished that she was up there, in the lights and the sky - anywhere but here.
The shouting of the guards grew louder. They'd be onto her any minute now.
"Tattletale," she said. "Can you hear me?"
Still no response.
She cradled her Link close to her chest. Stored inside was maybe a clue to finding her mom. Maybe, she thought, Tattletale could find it, take up her mission. Maybe Tattletale would avenge her and save her mom.
And then she felt like laughing. They weren't friends. They barely knew each other. It would never happen.
Her mom's disappearance would remain unsolved, and she'd die fruitlessly on the rooftop of an abandoned hotel.
The Teeth bursted out onto the roof, and she didn't dare look.
She could hear wet footsteps splash through puddles as they moved, sweeping down the walk space. In a few seconds, they'd find her, and it would all be over. All they had to do was look behind the air conditioning unit.
Taylor clutched the bag close, praying that they wouldn't shoot when they found her.
And then, as if by magic, a skycar dropped down from above, slamming down towards the roof. It was a massive, heavily armored thing, shaped like a van, but covered in metal plates and spikes. Its jets buffeted the rain around it. A gun turret was mounted onto its roof, which turned and pointed towards where Taylor assumed the guards were.
The rooftop fell into complete chaos as the skycar opened fire, tearing chunks out of the concrete. Screams filled the air, mixing with gunshots and splashes. It was incoherent, mostly, except for a few words here and there.
"Stairs! Down!" someone shouted.
Taylor was still hidden behind the air conditioning unit. She wondered if someone would hear the shooting and call the Protectorate - but then she thought about it, and figured that nobody in this part of town would bother calling the Protectorate, and even if someone did, they probably wouldn't bother showing up.
The skycar's door slid open, and a muscular girl with short auburn hair peeked out.
It was difficult to hear her over the gunfire, but the message was obvious. "Get in!" she shouted.
Taylor jumped to her feet, holding her bag tight, and ran. The rooftop was slick, and she was afraid she'd slip and fall with each step. Gunshots whizzed past her, barely missing her by inches. Her heart raced. After what felt like an eternity, she closed the gap and jumped into the skycar. She landed face first into the metal surface, tumbling over from the momentum.
The girl slid the door behind her, and bullets plinked off the metal, ricocheting off the armor. She stepped back into the driver's seat, and Taylor felt the ground jolt beneath her as they took off.
And then they were safe. In the sky, nobody could follow them.
It took her a long time to catch her breath. She felt her nerves on edge. It was an entirely different kind of cold than the ice had been.
The inside of the skycar was spartan. There were two seats in front, and an open space in the back, with a desk mounted to the wall. A set of hand tools were strapped against the desk – wrenches, screwdrivers, and a hammer.
Taylor glanced at her savior, who hadn't spoken a word since they'd taken off.
"Thanks," Taylor said.
She gave a noncommittal grunt.
"Did Tattletale send you?"
"Mm."
"Did she tell you who I am, or-"
"Bug," the driver said. "I know. Jacket off."
Taylor wiped the rain off her face, and shrugged off her coat. Instantly, she felt a lot warmer. They sat in silence. After a long while, the driver spoke again. "I'm Rachel," she said.
A real name. That was rare, in this line of business.
"Thanks, Rachel."
Rachel didn't say anything else, and the conversation lapsed. Taylor relaxed, leaning against the wall of the skycar, holding her bag closely.
She'd put all her hopes into this mission, and it was a long shot. The Teeth had a safehouse in a building next to GenCom's headquarters, and the hotel she'd just raided had contained a relay server that might've saved a copy of their security footage. If she was lucky, really lucky, there would be exterior camera footage from three years ago, when her mom had entered the GenCom campus and had never come home. She might catch a glimpse of a clue.
It was a start.
Her mom wasn't dead, whatever Tattletale thought. Taylor knew she was alive. She knew it, because a month after her mom had disappeared, she'd received a letter with personal details only her mom knew, addressed to her little owl.
She'd gone over the letter hundreds, thousands of times, had run it through analysis programs comparing it to other things her mom had written, and every time she came out with the same conclusion.
Her mom was out there somewhere, and Taylor was going to find her, no matter what it took.
JefLebowski
[Not Copaceptic]
- Location
- R'lyeh's Partner City
Looking forward to this. This feels properly like cyberpunk, and the characters seem... Well, in character even though things are quite different.
Especially appreciate how well it conveys the ...I guess 'wrong side of the corps' feel that cyberpunk needs so much to function well
Especially appreciate how well it conveys the ...I guess 'wrong side of the corps' feel that cyberpunk needs so much to function well
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Aw yeah, now this is the good stuff.
Chapter Two
- Location
- California
- Pronouns
- She/Her
To my Little Owl:
You've probably been wondering where I've been. I imagine you must be very worried. I'm sorry. I didn't think things would turn out the way they did, but here we are. Some people desperately need my help, and I don't think I can turn them away.Not that they're more important than you. Nothing is more important than you, but
I don't think I'll be able to come home anytime soon. Please don't worry about me. I'm fine, I'm safe, and I'm healthy. If nothing unexpected happens, I'll stay that way. There are so many things I dearly wish I could tell you, but it's not safe. Maybe one day, things will be different. If that time ever comes, know that nothing in the world could keep me from coming back to you.
Please don't show your father this letter. If he asks, please tell him I'm really gone. It's better if he believes that. I love him dearly, but I know that if he knew I was alive, he would stop at nothing to find me, and he would end up putting himself, me, and the people who are relying on me, in danger. I'm trusting you.
I know you will both survive without me. Take care of each other for me. I'm so proud of you, and I always have been.
I'm sorry I wasn't a better mother to you. I'm sorry that I won't be there for you when you need me.
Don't look for me. I'll watch over you when I can. Please don't grieve for me.
I will always love you,
Annette Rose Hebert
"Hi, Mom," Taylor said softly. She leaned in, replaying the video for the hundredth time that night.
The image showed a woman with curly black hair stepping leftwards past the gates of GenCom Headquarters. There had only been about four seconds of relevant footage where she was visible, halfway between the gate and a series of pillars, but in those four seconds, it was like Taylor was seeing a ghost. From the camera's angle, it almost looked as if her mother was looking back at her.
A voice cleared its throat in her earpiece. Her face turned red.
"Sorry," she said.
"Don't be. Just wanted to remind you that you're paying me by the hour, that's all."
"Right." Taylor leaned forward, the cheap chair creaking as she moved. "What's to the left of the gates? Where's she headed?"
"Looks like it's Human Resources. Was your mom looking for a job?"
She almost laughed. "Mom hated GenCom with a passion. Said they were the source of all the world's problems. She'd never work for them, even if they had her at gunpoint."
"Maybe they had something on her."
"You didn't know her. She was stubborn. If they had something, she would've just fought back harder."
"Hm. Something else, then."
"Maybe. Is this all we've got from the Teeth data dump?"
"There's the other bit of video."
"Right."
She flipped to a later section of the recording. This one was much shorter – about three frames long. Her mom was escorting a young girl toward the gate. The girl had straight, dark brown hair, but was otherwise unidentifiable from the angle of the camera. The two of them were leaving together, her mom holding her hand protectively. Taylor tried not to feel jealous watching the footage. She focused on the facts: her mom had come in that day, but whatever happened, she'd managed to leave that day. And she'd come in for this girl, apparently.
That was all they'd managed to retrieve from the mess at the Teeth hotel.
"Any idea who that is?"
"Not a clue. Ran the girl's face through my system, didn't come up with any matches. She's a ghost."
"A street rat?"
"Or some director's dirty little secret."
"It's a lead."
"It's a dead end, unless you've got some way to identify her."
Taylor bit her lip. "Fine. Let's put a pin in it for now. You find anything else meaningful in the dump?"
"Well, there are a few files referring to something called… Project Butcher."
"That doesn't sound good."
"It doesn't, but I can't make heads or tails of it. Most of it is just logs, meaningless access data, that kind of thing. But then there's a page that's just a list of names. Dozens of names."
With a few taps, Taylor pulled the files up on her screen. Tattletale was right. There were whole pages of names. "Recognize any of them?"
"Yeah. As far as I can tell, about half of them were Teeth leaders, at one point or another."
"So it's just a list of members?"
"No, that's not it. The other half of the list is all over the place. Mercenaries, Protectorate heavies, celebrities. It doesn't make sense."
"Maybe they're targets? People they're after, people they want dead or want to recruit."
"Some of these names are already dead. Others are untouchable. No, it doesn't add up."
"I don't think this has anything to do with my mom."
"Yeah, I'm inclined to agree. Interesting, but not relevant."
"Okay, back to square one. We know that my mom was at the GenCom building before she went missing. Do you think they'd still have records from that day? She was a guest, right? They would've had her fill a sign-in sheet or something, at the very least. Documentation."
"From three whole years ago? Mm. If GenCom was involved with whatever happened to her, they would've covered it up."
Taylor shook her head. "There has to be something."
"It's a risk. A huge risk. This is the kind of thing they'd go after your friends and family for, if you get caught."
"I know. I accept that."
Tattletale sighed. "Yeah. I know."
"You don't have to help me if you're scared it'll splash back on you."
Tattletale was silent for a while, long enough that Taylor was sure she was going to say she was done.
But then she spoke. "I'll help. But you'll have to pay triple my rate."
She sighed in relief. "Okay. Done. Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. I'm not sure you know what you're getting into here."
Taylor leaned back into her chair, her eyes locked onto the image on the screen. "So how do we get that info? I don't think we could touch their networks remotely."
"Definitely not. GenCom has firewalls thicker than the gates of Hell. The easiest way to beat them is to already be behind them. We'd do a dead second run."
Of course, Taylor thought. It was so simple that she should've thought of it.
"I've never done one before," she said.
"I'd assume so. You're new. You know what a dead second is?"
"Whenever a big corp resets their servers, right?"
"That's right. The ICE switches all the way off. Usually only lasts three or four milliseconds, and it only happens once a year or so, but if you get a thumb plugged into something important right before it happens, you can load up your code as their servers turn back on. The problem, of course, is that you actually have to be there in person to do it."
"But they'd know about that. They'd put security measures to prevent people from abusing that."
"Sure. I mean, they hide when they're going to do a reset, try to switch up the times, post extra security around possible reset times, but if you're in, you're in, you know? You manage to get something on the other side of the ICE and it's all over. And I know when GenCom's next dead second is: tomorrow afternoon."
Taylor frowned. "How do you know that?"
Tattletale laughed. "Can't be giving away all my secrets, can I?"
She probably had someone on the inside, she thought. Tattletale tried to be mysterious, but there were only so many ways to get insider information like that—especially when blackmail and manipulation were Tattletale's specialties.
"Okay, but even if you do know when they're vulnerable, I'd have to get inside to exploit that. GenCom's physical security is no joke."
She'd seen the movies, read articles. GenCom had their own private militia. Even a smaller branch, like the Brockton Bay one, had enough firepower to take out a small country, and they had a dozen net specialists specifically to counter hackers like her.
There was a moment of silence. "I have a plan, but you won't manage it alone," Tattletale said. "I think it's time for a face-to-face."
A meeting with the mysterious Tattletale, after all this time. Taylor pursed her lips. "Are you sure? I mean—you don't have to do it, if you don't want to."
"No, Taylor. I think it's time. Meet me at the diner across from the GenCom building tomorrow morning."
"Okay. How will I know that it's you?"
"I'll be wearing something purple. Bring your Link and all the gear you think you might need. Make sure you can hide it. Oh, and wear something nice."
"Something nice? Why?"
"Always pays to make a good first impression, doesn't it?" Tattletale said, before hanging up.
Taylor wasn't sure she knew how to make an impression anymore. Years of staying under the radar had kept her rusty. She couldn't remember the last time she'd gone on a social outing. Maybe four years ago, back when she was still a schoolkid, dodging Enforcers out in the midden after class, feverishly slaving away at the public machines at Winslow. Maybe then she'd had a social life.
It felt like a lifetime ago.
She rubbed her eyes, glancing toward her closet, which was threadbare at best. She didn't have much in the way of a wardrobe, and she'd have to figure something out in the morning.
She was tired, but there was one last thing she needed to do before she could go to sleep. She pulled out her cell, and with hesitant fingers, punched in the numbers. She got a response on the fifth ring.
"Hi, Dad," she said.
"...Hey, Taylor."
He sounded tired, but that was nothing new. He was always tired these days.
"I found something, Dad," she said, unable to keep the excitement from rising in her voice. "Something big."
"What are you talking about?"
She leaned into the handset. "About Mom. I found a lead. It took a lot of work, but I have something now. It's real. I think – I think I can actually find her, if I pull at this thread long enough."
She heard a strangled sound through the microphone. And then a single word. "Stop." His voice was rough.
"Dad–"
"Just stop. I don't know why you bother. You were right, okay, Taylor? You were right."
"Dad, I found a real lead. I saw her. Do you have any idea what this means? I saw her. There's a trail to follow now!"
There was a brief pause where all she could hear was breathing. And then a long sigh.
"Go out, Taylor. Go meet some friends. Party. Get drunk. Live your life." He sighed. "Anything but… this. You're smart, you can do anything you want. Just… it's time to let go of the past."
"Dad, she's alive," Taylor said, but even before the words left her mouth, she knew he wouldn't believe her. Not after what she'd done to him.
The seconds stretched out into awkward minutes, and she could hear a clatter as the phone was put down, and then distant footsteps and a faucet running. She wasn't sure if he was going to come back, if that was it, if he could stand to talk to her so little that he'd just leave without a word.
She wanted to scream and cry all at once.
And then she heard the phone get picked up again.
"Um," he said, and Taylor leaned in with bated breath. "The, uh… coffeemaker you sent me stopped working the other day," he muttered. "Something about a bad license."
She shut her eyes, trying her hardest not to let any emotion through. Even so, she could feel her hands clenching so hard that the plastic creaked a little.
"Cafiplex does that," she said, cradling the phone close to her ear. "They update their verification system every once in a while, and it kicks off anyone who's not paying for their subscription. Uh, don't pay for it. You have to update the machine with a hacked file to get it to stop checking. I'll send you the new files with instructions to fix it."
"Mm. Thanks, Taylor."
"Yeah. And I—" The words choked in her throat. She had to say something, anything. "Do you want to get lunch on Friday?" Like old times, she thought. It was something they'd done every week after her mom had disappeared, trying to hold themselves together. After about a year, it'd stopped forever.
"I… think I'm going to be busy."
Her heart sank. "Okay," she said. "Okay. Love you, Dad." She didn't trust herself to say any more.
"Bye."
It didn't escape her that he didn't say 'I love you' back. But that was fine with her. She didn't deserve it yet. It was her fault their relationship was so bad, after all, with what she'd done to him. The way she'd hurt her own father.
She wouldn't deserve it until she found her mom and brought them all back together again. It would happen one day—she was sure of it.
She didn't sleep much that night, tossing and turning, dreaming of nothing.
In the morning, she swallowed three little cherry-flavored pills and tried to still her shaking hands on the skyrail ride across town. She clutched her bag close to her chest, her eyes flickering toward every little motion in her periphery, ready to draw her knife at a moment's notice. The sun peered through the mottled grey-blue of the sky, casting long shadows in the train that seemed to dance across her vision.
By the time the train crossed the threshold into GenCom territory, her mouth felt dry.
She'd never been this close to the GenCom HQ before.
She'd seen it before, of course, from a distance. She remembered watching the sunset with her mom on the roof of their house, golden light gleaming through the smoky Bay skyline. Even then, as a kid, she'd thought that the GenCom building was an ugly obtrusion. She'd thought it looked like it was staring at her, a rectangular, blank face watching from miles away.
But from here, it was hard to describe it as anything less than impressive. The complex was massive, dwarfing everything else around it. The building looked nearly as tall as any of the high-rises around the city, but it was wide, too. Each side was about twenty blocks long.
Of course, this paled to how it looked in the Link. In virtual space, GenCom headquarters was an entire city on its own.
The train stopped, and she shuffled out the door with everyone else, marching down flights of stairs until finally she reached the ground, far below the floodline.
The city was built in two tiers, ever since the last hurricane had put half the city underwater. Everything important was built up high, on hills or on stilts, forming a massive canopy of buildings that blotted out the sky. Everything below the floodline was where normal people lived, and where Enforcers seldom went, unless they were specifically contracted by one of the richer businessmen from undertown.
The moment she stepped down into street level, all eyes were on her. Her mother's dress didn't fit her right, hung too loosely around the shoulders and was long enough to where it caught on her shoes as she walked. It was clearly made for someone taller than her, but Taylor hadn't had anything else to wear.
Even so, it looked expensive. It made her stand out.
She felt like an idiot wearing it into Fugly Bob's. It was the kind of greasy tarpit that had swapped to cooking with biogels decades ago, and the air was soaked through with the oil substitute. She could feel eyes following her, ogling her as she passed through.
It was like she had a target on her back. This felt wrong, being so visible. She felt vulnerable in a way she hadn't felt for years. There was a reason she felt more at home in her Link than she did in meatspace. In there, she was in control, had the power to defend herself. Out here, she was just another girl. Tired, weak. Vulnerable.
Her thoughts drifted back to her dad. This was the kind of place they used to eat sometimes, before. She hadn't felt vulnerable then. When her dad was around, everything had felt safe. It angered her, just a little, that the feeling was inaccessible to her now. Her dad wasn't even gone, just… unavailable.
And it was her own fault.
Someone touched her shoulder, and she clenched a fist instinctively, ready to strike.
"Hey, Taylor," she said with a familiar voice. Taylor turned around to see a blonde girl, about her age, wearing a purple coat and a mischievous smile. There was something off about her expression, something that reminded her of the plastic 'crats she'd seen on TV. A cold, untrusting air, despite the grin she wore so prominently.
It was unnerving. It was difficult to reconcile this girl with the boisterous hacker she'd met online.
Taylor frowned. "You're…"
"Call me Lisa," the girl said. "Glad to finally put a face to a name."
Just like that, Taylor wondered? A real name?
"Lisa. Is that—?"
"It's real enough," she said, glancing at Taylor's dress. "You're a little overdressed, don't you think?"
Taylor frowned. "You said to wear something nice."
"It is nice, yes. But I also said diner, didn't I?"
She could feel the stuffy, slick air getting soaked into her clothes.
"Oh," she said.
"Oh," Tattletale echoed. "Whatever. It'll do. Let's get out of here."
"We're not staying to eat?" she asked, even though she wasn't hungry, and even if she were, she couldn't imagine stomaching anything made in this place.
Tattletale scoffed. "Here? Not unless you're cool with having a heart attack."
Taylor nodded, let herself be led out the door and up a flight of rusty steps. They walked in silence as the two of them plodded along toward the upper city.
It was familiar, climbing up the public steps, even though she hadn't been to this part of the Bay since way before her mom had disappeared. She'd spent her childhood years playing in the wetroads before Dad had gotten a new job and secured a house at flood level. He liked to brag that they were in the upper city, because their new home was built a whole ten feet above the floodline, but really, they were just in the middle with everyone else. There was nothing special about ten over. It was a rickety old place, filled with mold and holes and carcinogens, probably. Even so, she missed it.
She missed a lot of things these days.
"You alright?" Tattletale asked. "You're quiet. Quieter than usual."
"No offense," Taylor said, "but it's really none of your business."
She raised a hand in surrender. "Sure."
They walked in silence for a while, gingerly stepping over slick-wet concrete, making their way toward the headquarters proper.
"You can still back out if you want," Taylor said. "I can do this job myself."
"No, you really can't. You wouldn't even make it past the front gate without me. You'd get shot before you even made it to the front of the line."
"I'm not that helpless."
"But you're not all that subtle, either," Tattletale shot back.
"You're talking about the Teeth job."
"Yeah, I am."
"That was bad luck."
"That was bad decision-making, Taylor. Let's not mince words here. You fucked up. We could've gotten the data dump later. It wasn't going anywhere. But you pushed, and you almost got killed for it. If it wasn't for Rachel, you'd be dead." She paused. "Speaking of, you owe me six hundred Gens."
Taylor frowned. "Why?"
"Had to pay her out of my own pocket to come save you. Call it a work expense."
She crossed her arms. "Fine. You'll have it."
"That's not the point, Taylor. It's not about the money. It's about how you screwed up because you got greedy."
"It wasn't greed, it was—"
"It doesn't matter why. The point is, you pull something like that here? We're dead. Both of us. They'll string us up, torture our simstructs for days until our brains turn to pudding. Real shitty way to go. You understand?"
Taylor rolled her eyes. "I get it. Now what's the plan?"
For a while, Tattletale didn't respond, and they walked in silence. And then she grinned, holding up a pair of plastic cards that Taylor recognized as tickets. "We're going on a tour."
You've probably been wondering where I've been. I imagine you must be very worried. I'm sorry. I didn't think things would turn out the way they did, but here we are. Some people desperately need my help, and I don't think I can turn them away.
I don't think I'll be able to come home anytime soon. Please don't worry about me. I'm fine, I'm safe, and I'm healthy. If nothing unexpected happens, I'll stay that way. There are so many things I dearly wish I could tell you, but it's not safe. Maybe one day, things will be different. If that time ever comes, know that nothing in the world could keep me from coming back to you.
Please don't show your father this letter. If he asks, please tell him I'm really gone. It's better if he believes that. I love him dearly, but I know that if he knew I was alive, he would stop at nothing to find me, and he would end up putting himself, me, and the people who are relying on me, in danger. I'm trusting you.
I know you will both survive without me. Take care of each other for me. I'm so proud of you, and I always have been.
I'm sorry I wasn't a better mother to you. I'm sorry that I won't be there for you when you need me.
Don't look for me. I'll watch over you when I can. Please don't grieve for me.
I will always love you,
Annette Rose Hebert
"Hi, Mom," Taylor said softly. She leaned in, replaying the video for the hundredth time that night.
The image showed a woman with curly black hair stepping leftwards past the gates of GenCom Headquarters. There had only been about four seconds of relevant footage where she was visible, halfway between the gate and a series of pillars, but in those four seconds, it was like Taylor was seeing a ghost. From the camera's angle, it almost looked as if her mother was looking back at her.
A voice cleared its throat in her earpiece. Her face turned red.
"Sorry," she said.
"Don't be. Just wanted to remind you that you're paying me by the hour, that's all."
"Right." Taylor leaned forward, the cheap chair creaking as she moved. "What's to the left of the gates? Where's she headed?"
"Looks like it's Human Resources. Was your mom looking for a job?"
She almost laughed. "Mom hated GenCom with a passion. Said they were the source of all the world's problems. She'd never work for them, even if they had her at gunpoint."
"Maybe they had something on her."
"You didn't know her. She was stubborn. If they had something, she would've just fought back harder."
"Hm. Something else, then."
"Maybe. Is this all we've got from the Teeth data dump?"
"There's the other bit of video."
"Right."
She flipped to a later section of the recording. This one was much shorter – about three frames long. Her mom was escorting a young girl toward the gate. The girl had straight, dark brown hair, but was otherwise unidentifiable from the angle of the camera. The two of them were leaving together, her mom holding her hand protectively. Taylor tried not to feel jealous watching the footage. She focused on the facts: her mom had come in that day, but whatever happened, she'd managed to leave that day. And she'd come in for this girl, apparently.
That was all they'd managed to retrieve from the mess at the Teeth hotel.
"Any idea who that is?"
"Not a clue. Ran the girl's face through my system, didn't come up with any matches. She's a ghost."
"A street rat?"
"Or some director's dirty little secret."
"It's a lead."
"It's a dead end, unless you've got some way to identify her."
Taylor bit her lip. "Fine. Let's put a pin in it for now. You find anything else meaningful in the dump?"
"Well, there are a few files referring to something called… Project Butcher."
"That doesn't sound good."
"It doesn't, but I can't make heads or tails of it. Most of it is just logs, meaningless access data, that kind of thing. But then there's a page that's just a list of names. Dozens of names."
With a few taps, Taylor pulled the files up on her screen. Tattletale was right. There were whole pages of names. "Recognize any of them?"
"Yeah. As far as I can tell, about half of them were Teeth leaders, at one point or another."
"So it's just a list of members?"
"No, that's not it. The other half of the list is all over the place. Mercenaries, Protectorate heavies, celebrities. It doesn't make sense."
"Maybe they're targets? People they're after, people they want dead or want to recruit."
"Some of these names are already dead. Others are untouchable. No, it doesn't add up."
"I don't think this has anything to do with my mom."
"Yeah, I'm inclined to agree. Interesting, but not relevant."
"Okay, back to square one. We know that my mom was at the GenCom building before she went missing. Do you think they'd still have records from that day? She was a guest, right? They would've had her fill a sign-in sheet or something, at the very least. Documentation."
"From three whole years ago? Mm. If GenCom was involved with whatever happened to her, they would've covered it up."
Taylor shook her head. "There has to be something."
"It's a risk. A huge risk. This is the kind of thing they'd go after your friends and family for, if you get caught."
"I know. I accept that."
Tattletale sighed. "Yeah. I know."
"You don't have to help me if you're scared it'll splash back on you."
Tattletale was silent for a while, long enough that Taylor was sure she was going to say she was done.
But then she spoke. "I'll help. But you'll have to pay triple my rate."
She sighed in relief. "Okay. Done. Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. I'm not sure you know what you're getting into here."
Taylor leaned back into her chair, her eyes locked onto the image on the screen. "So how do we get that info? I don't think we could touch their networks remotely."
"Definitely not. GenCom has firewalls thicker than the gates of Hell. The easiest way to beat them is to already be behind them. We'd do a dead second run."
Of course, Taylor thought. It was so simple that she should've thought of it.
"I've never done one before," she said.
"I'd assume so. You're new. You know what a dead second is?"
"Whenever a big corp resets their servers, right?"
"That's right. The ICE switches all the way off. Usually only lasts three or four milliseconds, and it only happens once a year or so, but if you get a thumb plugged into something important right before it happens, you can load up your code as their servers turn back on. The problem, of course, is that you actually have to be there in person to do it."
"But they'd know about that. They'd put security measures to prevent people from abusing that."
"Sure. I mean, they hide when they're going to do a reset, try to switch up the times, post extra security around possible reset times, but if you're in, you're in, you know? You manage to get something on the other side of the ICE and it's all over. And I know when GenCom's next dead second is: tomorrow afternoon."
Taylor frowned. "How do you know that?"
Tattletale laughed. "Can't be giving away all my secrets, can I?"
She probably had someone on the inside, she thought. Tattletale tried to be mysterious, but there were only so many ways to get insider information like that—especially when blackmail and manipulation were Tattletale's specialties.
"Okay, but even if you do know when they're vulnerable, I'd have to get inside to exploit that. GenCom's physical security is no joke."
She'd seen the movies, read articles. GenCom had their own private militia. Even a smaller branch, like the Brockton Bay one, had enough firepower to take out a small country, and they had a dozen net specialists specifically to counter hackers like her.
There was a moment of silence. "I have a plan, but you won't manage it alone," Tattletale said. "I think it's time for a face-to-face."
A meeting with the mysterious Tattletale, after all this time. Taylor pursed her lips. "Are you sure? I mean—you don't have to do it, if you don't want to."
"No, Taylor. I think it's time. Meet me at the diner across from the GenCom building tomorrow morning."
"Okay. How will I know that it's you?"
"I'll be wearing something purple. Bring your Link and all the gear you think you might need. Make sure you can hide it. Oh, and wear something nice."
"Something nice? Why?"
"Always pays to make a good first impression, doesn't it?" Tattletale said, before hanging up.
Taylor wasn't sure she knew how to make an impression anymore. Years of staying under the radar had kept her rusty. She couldn't remember the last time she'd gone on a social outing. Maybe four years ago, back when she was still a schoolkid, dodging Enforcers out in the midden after class, feverishly slaving away at the public machines at Winslow. Maybe then she'd had a social life.
It felt like a lifetime ago.
She rubbed her eyes, glancing toward her closet, which was threadbare at best. She didn't have much in the way of a wardrobe, and she'd have to figure something out in the morning.
She was tired, but there was one last thing she needed to do before she could go to sleep. She pulled out her cell, and with hesitant fingers, punched in the numbers. She got a response on the fifth ring.
"Hi, Dad," she said.
"...Hey, Taylor."
He sounded tired, but that was nothing new. He was always tired these days.
"I found something, Dad," she said, unable to keep the excitement from rising in her voice. "Something big."
"What are you talking about?"
She leaned into the handset. "About Mom. I found a lead. It took a lot of work, but I have something now. It's real. I think – I think I can actually find her, if I pull at this thread long enough."
She heard a strangled sound through the microphone. And then a single word. "Stop." His voice was rough.
"Dad–"
"Just stop. I don't know why you bother. You were right, okay, Taylor? You were right."
"Dad, I found a real lead. I saw her. Do you have any idea what this means? I saw her. There's a trail to follow now!"
There was a brief pause where all she could hear was breathing. And then a long sigh.
"Go out, Taylor. Go meet some friends. Party. Get drunk. Live your life." He sighed. "Anything but… this. You're smart, you can do anything you want. Just… it's time to let go of the past."
"Dad, she's alive," Taylor said, but even before the words left her mouth, she knew he wouldn't believe her. Not after what she'd done to him.
The seconds stretched out into awkward minutes, and she could hear a clatter as the phone was put down, and then distant footsteps and a faucet running. She wasn't sure if he was going to come back, if that was it, if he could stand to talk to her so little that he'd just leave without a word.
She wanted to scream and cry all at once.
And then she heard the phone get picked up again.
"Um," he said, and Taylor leaned in with bated breath. "The, uh… coffeemaker you sent me stopped working the other day," he muttered. "Something about a bad license."
She shut her eyes, trying her hardest not to let any emotion through. Even so, she could feel her hands clenching so hard that the plastic creaked a little.
"Cafiplex does that," she said, cradling the phone close to her ear. "They update their verification system every once in a while, and it kicks off anyone who's not paying for their subscription. Uh, don't pay for it. You have to update the machine with a hacked file to get it to stop checking. I'll send you the new files with instructions to fix it."
"Mm. Thanks, Taylor."
"Yeah. And I—" The words choked in her throat. She had to say something, anything. "Do you want to get lunch on Friday?" Like old times, she thought. It was something they'd done every week after her mom had disappeared, trying to hold themselves together. After about a year, it'd stopped forever.
"I… think I'm going to be busy."
Her heart sank. "Okay," she said. "Okay. Love you, Dad." She didn't trust herself to say any more.
"Bye."
It didn't escape her that he didn't say 'I love you' back. But that was fine with her. She didn't deserve it yet. It was her fault their relationship was so bad, after all, with what she'd done to him. The way she'd hurt her own father.
She wouldn't deserve it until she found her mom and brought them all back together again. It would happen one day—she was sure of it.
She didn't sleep much that night, tossing and turning, dreaming of nothing.
In the morning, she swallowed three little cherry-flavored pills and tried to still her shaking hands on the skyrail ride across town. She clutched her bag close to her chest, her eyes flickering toward every little motion in her periphery, ready to draw her knife at a moment's notice. The sun peered through the mottled grey-blue of the sky, casting long shadows in the train that seemed to dance across her vision.
By the time the train crossed the threshold into GenCom territory, her mouth felt dry.
She'd never been this close to the GenCom HQ before.
She'd seen it before, of course, from a distance. She remembered watching the sunset with her mom on the roof of their house, golden light gleaming through the smoky Bay skyline. Even then, as a kid, she'd thought that the GenCom building was an ugly obtrusion. She'd thought it looked like it was staring at her, a rectangular, blank face watching from miles away.
But from here, it was hard to describe it as anything less than impressive. The complex was massive, dwarfing everything else around it. The building looked nearly as tall as any of the high-rises around the city, but it was wide, too. Each side was about twenty blocks long.
Of course, this paled to how it looked in the Link. In virtual space, GenCom headquarters was an entire city on its own.
The train stopped, and she shuffled out the door with everyone else, marching down flights of stairs until finally she reached the ground, far below the floodline.
The city was built in two tiers, ever since the last hurricane had put half the city underwater. Everything important was built up high, on hills or on stilts, forming a massive canopy of buildings that blotted out the sky. Everything below the floodline was where normal people lived, and where Enforcers seldom went, unless they were specifically contracted by one of the richer businessmen from undertown.
The moment she stepped down into street level, all eyes were on her. Her mother's dress didn't fit her right, hung too loosely around the shoulders and was long enough to where it caught on her shoes as she walked. It was clearly made for someone taller than her, but Taylor hadn't had anything else to wear.
Even so, it looked expensive. It made her stand out.
She felt like an idiot wearing it into Fugly Bob's. It was the kind of greasy tarpit that had swapped to cooking with biogels decades ago, and the air was soaked through with the oil substitute. She could feel eyes following her, ogling her as she passed through.
It was like she had a target on her back. This felt wrong, being so visible. She felt vulnerable in a way she hadn't felt for years. There was a reason she felt more at home in her Link than she did in meatspace. In there, she was in control, had the power to defend herself. Out here, she was just another girl. Tired, weak. Vulnerable.
Her thoughts drifted back to her dad. This was the kind of place they used to eat sometimes, before. She hadn't felt vulnerable then. When her dad was around, everything had felt safe. It angered her, just a little, that the feeling was inaccessible to her now. Her dad wasn't even gone, just… unavailable.
And it was her own fault.
Someone touched her shoulder, and she clenched a fist instinctively, ready to strike.
"Hey, Taylor," she said with a familiar voice. Taylor turned around to see a blonde girl, about her age, wearing a purple coat and a mischievous smile. There was something off about her expression, something that reminded her of the plastic 'crats she'd seen on TV. A cold, untrusting air, despite the grin she wore so prominently.
It was unnerving. It was difficult to reconcile this girl with the boisterous hacker she'd met online.
Taylor frowned. "You're…"
"Call me Lisa," the girl said. "Glad to finally put a face to a name."
Just like that, Taylor wondered? A real name?
"Lisa. Is that—?"
"It's real enough," she said, glancing at Taylor's dress. "You're a little overdressed, don't you think?"
Taylor frowned. "You said to wear something nice."
"It is nice, yes. But I also said diner, didn't I?"
She could feel the stuffy, slick air getting soaked into her clothes.
"Oh," she said.
"Oh," Tattletale echoed. "Whatever. It'll do. Let's get out of here."
"We're not staying to eat?" she asked, even though she wasn't hungry, and even if she were, she couldn't imagine stomaching anything made in this place.
Tattletale scoffed. "Here? Not unless you're cool with having a heart attack."
Taylor nodded, let herself be led out the door and up a flight of rusty steps. They walked in silence as the two of them plodded along toward the upper city.
It was familiar, climbing up the public steps, even though she hadn't been to this part of the Bay since way before her mom had disappeared. She'd spent her childhood years playing in the wetroads before Dad had gotten a new job and secured a house at flood level. He liked to brag that they were in the upper city, because their new home was built a whole ten feet above the floodline, but really, they were just in the middle with everyone else. There was nothing special about ten over. It was a rickety old place, filled with mold and holes and carcinogens, probably. Even so, she missed it.
She missed a lot of things these days.
"You alright?" Tattletale asked. "You're quiet. Quieter than usual."
"No offense," Taylor said, "but it's really none of your business."
She raised a hand in surrender. "Sure."
They walked in silence for a while, gingerly stepping over slick-wet concrete, making their way toward the headquarters proper.
"You can still back out if you want," Taylor said. "I can do this job myself."
"No, you really can't. You wouldn't even make it past the front gate without me. You'd get shot before you even made it to the front of the line."
"I'm not that helpless."
"But you're not all that subtle, either," Tattletale shot back.
"You're talking about the Teeth job."
"Yeah, I am."
"That was bad luck."
"That was bad decision-making, Taylor. Let's not mince words here. You fucked up. We could've gotten the data dump later. It wasn't going anywhere. But you pushed, and you almost got killed for it. If it wasn't for Rachel, you'd be dead." She paused. "Speaking of, you owe me six hundred Gens."
Taylor frowned. "Why?"
"Had to pay her out of my own pocket to come save you. Call it a work expense."
She crossed her arms. "Fine. You'll have it."
"That's not the point, Taylor. It's not about the money. It's about how you screwed up because you got greedy."
"It wasn't greed, it was—"
"It doesn't matter why. The point is, you pull something like that here? We're dead. Both of us. They'll string us up, torture our simstructs for days until our brains turn to pudding. Real shitty way to go. You understand?"
Taylor rolled her eyes. "I get it. Now what's the plan?"
For a while, Tattletale didn't respond, and they walked in silence. And then she grinned, holding up a pair of plastic cards that Taylor recognized as tickets. "We're going on a tour."
