Bitstream

13.4

Sector 12 turned out to be much bigger than I'd imagined. Maybe it was Dance's map that tricked me into thinking it would be neat, containable, something you could fold and tuck in a pocket, but maps lie. They strip the fat off the world, leave nothing but lines and geometry. They don't tell you about the oil-slick puddles blooming rainbow under floodlamps or the overcast sky pressing everything flat and colourless and oh-so-horribly chalky. They don't show the markets crammed into alleys between corporate façades, noodle steam curling into the chemical fog, or the sharp tang of solvent and diesel that makes your teeth buzz if you breathe too deep.

And maybe it's better that way – for those in power, that is.

Fingers and I wait outside in the Fragment Roamer. The facility stretches across three massive cubes, connected by hulking skybridges and encircled by a suspended road that likely leads to staff parking. To the far right is the loading dock where a private road marks the side of the freeway. The Lumina trucks have already pulled through it and are parked neatly across the concrete, their freights facing giant shutters, waiting for Carrow to pop up with the month's load of fresh 'mind-control soda'.

So far, so good.

A few days earlier I'd run a quick 'Server Locator' scan, marking every camera. The interior – at least the public-access sections – was rigged with infrared. This was a big, big problem, especially when you factored in potentially armed security guarding the sub-level elevator. That's where the suits came in. Fingers pulled the old Chroma-Skin out of storage – V-technica anti-fibre cloaks, as she likes to call them. They'd held up better than I expected. A few patches here and there, some nodes repaired, and they purred back to life. They weren't perfect invisibility – they shimmered if you moved too fast, and they bled heat if someone looked with the right lenses – but paired with a blackout? That was our best chance.

Dance and Vander drew the blackout detail. There's a service lattice running under the northern block: tight crawlspaces, braided wiring thicker than your arm. Dance would trace the lines with his brickie, Vander would do the cutting. If they pulled it clean, the security grid would hiccup, cameras blink to black. That was our window to slip past the guards, into the elevator, and down into the lower levels, where they would likely pass it off as a defect following the power outage.

We're already dressed up in the Chroma-Skin, waiting on Dance for the go-ahead. He and Vander have been in there quite a while, and each passing minute has my heart ticking like a butterfly trying to break through a bedroom window. But when a sharp burst of static comes through Cloud Room 7, I relax, even if just by a little.

"In position, mate," Dance says.

"Took you long enough," says Fingers with an edge of contempt, though I can tell she's only having a little bit of fun, which is unusual for her. Normally she's all stressed out on missions. Something must have changed, and I'm betting Arden had something to do with it.

Not that I mind. She can get pretty bitchy at times.

"Ready, Mono?" she asks.

I watch as she zips the Chroma-Skin up over head. It reminds me of the night we snuck into the cargo ship, the night I almost died to those giant magnet claws, the night where everything could have gone horribly different – and (by extension) how far I've come.

"Ready as I'll ever be," I say banally, zipping the suit up over my head, pressing the centre button on my chest, and watching as the anti-fibre turns invisible from the outside. I step out into the parking lot and follow Fingers' outline over to the public facility; it's quiet, so we don't have to worry too much about misplacing our steps or someone accidentally piercing the suit's skin. We just head up the concrete stairs and hustle on inside, where, to my great displeasure, things are, in fact, much busier.

Reception hall, whitewashed, a little too bright, as if they're trying to burn shadows off the floor. Rows of soft chairs with corporate pamphlets stacked on glass tables. A looping holo-banner peddling Sector 12's 'cortical therapy breakthroughs' in soft pastel fonts. It's all façade: the kind of showroom dressing that keeps civvies convinced they're stepping into a hospital and not a slaughterhouse.

And right at the throat of the atrium: a scanning arch.

Two guards flank it, both in corporate greys, eyes glittering with aug-lenses. Civilians line up, docile, one at a time stepping through the arch. A thin laser ripple passes over them, and a green light pings at the top. I can practically feel the machine sniffing for weapons, for implants, for anything that shouldn't be here.

Our suits make us ghosts, but ghosts still cast shadows if you shine the right light. This arch is tuned to catch strays just like us. I know it.

Still, that shouldn't be too much of a problem. 'Least not yet.

I press against a column, watching the civilians pass through the scanner one by one. Only takes a few seconds. A beep here, a beep there, and in they go. When there's no one left and the guards are relaxed, I run a quick-scan on the machine. Security System Model: KiyoScan-47. I give Fingers the signal to move up with me, and as we approach, I activate 'Manual Override'; the blue light protruding from the scanner flickers off, but not forever. A timer counting down from five seconds appears on my HUD, and I rasp out, 'Move!' – not loudly, but borderline.

We press through the scanner and swiftly duck behind another column. The override timer dies with a soft ping, and the scanner hums alive again, light stuttering before stabilising back to its default green. Nobody's the wiser, thank the Lord.

The reception hall is certainly massive and, without surprise, very white. In the very centre is a giant hologram of Earth hovering over an alabaster fountain; scientists in pristine lab coats drift around it, shepherding clusters of civvies through scripted tours.

Zipping cheerfully between them on a single gyroscopic wheel is a chrome-plated robot, rotors humming just enough to keep it hovering a few inches off the ground. Every few metres it bursts into canned greetings: "Welcome to Sector 12! Please enjoy your mandatory happiness experience!" – before nearly colliding with a chair and swerving wildly back into formation. A child points and laughs. The guards don't even blink; clearly the little nuisance is a standard part of the décor.

"Someone turn that thing off," shouts one of the receptionists. "It's gonna bring the whole place down on its head."

One of the scientists briefly breaks away from a cluster, walks over to the spinning bot, and presses a button at the nape, causing it to power down and hang limp.

I don't blame them. Whoever's idea it was to put a bot like that in a serious institution has a very botched understanding of customer service.

On the left side, where things are marginally more peaceful, a series of set-ups gleam under spotlights: chrome frames where volunteers are seated, heads clamped, eyes and ears threaded with fibre-optic bands. A technician slides a finger down a console and the subject jolts, pupils dilating wide until nothing but black remains. A screen nearby displays a storm of brainwave patterns, spiking and folding in real time. The caption hovering above it in pastel font: Neural Harmony: The Future of Therapy. Farther along, a pair of civvies sit in what look like dentist chairs, except these chairs bristle with electrodes and drip-lines. A holo screen behind them paints their brain activity in brilliant fractals, while an automated voiceover loops soft assurances: 'Optimisation of the Self, Safe and Certified by Sector 12 Research'. One of the civvies laughs nervously; the other sits slack, drooling as the machine hums on. There are booths too, sleek glass cubes where people slip on headsets shaped like inverted teardrops. Their bodies barely move, mouths hanging open, while within the cube's transparent walls a full-colour dreamscape blossoms: rolling green fields, childhood kitchens, beaches under pink skies. To the watching families outside, it looks like therapy. To me, it looks like rehearsals for something darker.

On the right side, the reception hall funnels into what looks like an interior arcade: too wide to be a corridor, too exposed to call a hallway. A kind of open side-alley, flanked by glass walls on one side and skeletal pillars on the other, with the ceiling cut out high above into some corporate atrium that lets the sodium glow of rainlight drizzle down from skylights. It's an architectural flex that screams: 'Look at our transparency, we've got nothing to hide.'

Heh. Yeah right.

But, as expected, the infrared cameras are nearly everywhere in the facility. On the walls, over the booths. Hell, even the top part of the Earth-o-gram's metal frame has a big fat eye itching to catch someone sneaking in. The only safe places are behind the odd column and that's it.

Calyx Ward isn't messing around when it comes to protecting her babies, it seems. Unlike Neo Arcadia's elite, she might actually be intelligent, and I have to admit: that's pretty frightening to think about.

A burst of static stops my train of thought dead in its tracks, and Dance speaks muffledly:

"What's takin' so long? You geese in position?"

I press the chip through the Chroma-Skin, unmuting, eyes locked on the bodyguards in front of the subsector elevator. "How long do you think you can knock the power out for?"

"Based on this set-up," Dance replies. "Solid thirty minutes, I'd say. Maybe even longer. 'Cause they'll probably send someone down to activate a back-up, and ol' Vander here will give 'em a quick one-two and blamo. Boom. Bam. Boo—"

"Shut up, Dance," Fingers snaps, and I wholly agree with every word. It's easy for him to joke when he doesn't have all this pressure resting on his shoulders.

I will say, though: it's relieving to hear we won't be stuck on a tight time constraint. That at least eases the pressure somewhat.

"Alright," says Fingers. "On my count, cut the power. Mono? You and I are gonna book it for the elevator. I'll press the button, bring us down, but just don't mess up. Got it?"

There's that sharpness again. "Got it."

Fingers sucks in a deep breath, as do I, and begins her countdown.

"Three."

I tighten, getting ready to sprint.

"Two."

Another deep breath, just for good measure.

"One."

The power to the facility cuts off, and the people – both the civilians and the scientists – let out exasperated groans, their combined voices offering at least some covering for us to foot it across the floor.

Which we do.

Quickly, running as fast as we possibly can, careful not to bump into anyone or—

The lights switch back on, and suddenly cameras start turning towards me.

Within seconds, a pair of hands grabs me by the shoulders, and I think that for a moment I'm caught. But rather than bringing me to the ground, the hands pull me back – behind another column. Fingers had caught me just in the nick of time, before the cameras could pick up on it. The visitors and employees swiftly return to their tours, brushing off the mini power outage as nothing more than an effect of the bad weather passing through Paxson.

I take a moment to gather my breath – that was quite a run, after all – and peek around the column, watching as the cameras switch back into their default sweeps. I unmute, but before I can ask the question, Fingers perks up and asks it for me:

"What the hell was that, Dance? The power was only out for a few seconds."

Static. "Looks like they had a back-up on stand-by." He clears his throat. "You'll have to give us a minute."

"To what? Waste our time even more?" I say. "The back-up is in-house. It makes no sense to have redundancies this fast unless Ward paid for double failsafes. You're telling me you didn't clock that?"

"Oi, princess," Dance snaps back through the static. "I clocked it fine. Just didn't expect the failsafe to boot in three bloody seconds. Vander says the lattice was hot as hell, like a toaster with wings. Nearly cooked my fingers off trying to reroute. Besides, what would you know about electrics, mate?"

"Respectfully, quite a lot," I say, remembering my childhood, the time I built Scrapboy with Lucian and wired it near perfectly. "But enough arguing. What can you get done now, specifically?"

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

Vander's bassline growl filters in: "System's er nested. Double-core. First line cut, second one fires up automatic. We er can't keep it dern longer'n a blink."

"Great," mutters Fingers. "Means the blackout plan's dead. Cameras are going to eat us alive in here if we make a run for it again. Unless… Mono, we could try deactivating the cameras now. Management will probably pass it off as a symptom of the outage."

"There's still the problem of the guards standing at the elevator," I say. "They'll notice something's up with the lights on and nothing to keep them distracted. But I get your thinking. We just need something to redirect their attention, like before on the cargo ship. Back then it was an android, and admittedly it wasn't entirely successful."

"We do have something," says Fingers, and I follow the vague outline of her arm pointed across the column to the centre of the open reception area, to the chrome-plated greeter bot hanging limp in its power-down status. Little nuisance was bumbling into chairs earlier, spitting holo-slogans like a clown on speed. A broken toy waiting for a cruel kid to pick it back up.

"We can't short-circuit it," I say. "Because there are people and children around, and I don't want to hurt them. But… maybe." An idea springs to mind. I bring up my neural display, navigate to my quick-hack list, and select 'Black Iris'. I run a scan and see that the Black Iris quick-hack is compatible with the bot's optics, as is Manual Override. After that, I peek around at all the cameras in the vicinity, refresh the 'Server Locator', showing them all connected by digital red lines.

I take a moment to go over the idea in my own head, over this angle, over that angle, eventually settling on one direction. Then, I place my hand on Fingers' invisible shoulder and say, "Alright, here's what we're gonna do: I'm gonna re-activate the bot, then I'm gonna infect it with 'Black Iris'. We'll see what it does without vision."

Fingers takes an even longer moment to process all of that, so long I nearly think she's going to call me an idiot for suggesting such an idea, but she doesn't. She huffs a subtle laugh and says, "Let's see it."

I peek further around the column, line up my optic scanner on the bot, and tap into 'Manual Override'. Options for 'On' and 'Off' appear side by side. I quickly select 'On' and watch as the bot jumps to life.

"Welcome to Sector 12," the bot blurts. "Please enjoy your mandatory happiness experience!" It wheels along, approaching the visitors.

"I thought I told you to shut that off," shouts one of the receptionists.

"I did," a scientist says, letting out a groan and marching back towards the bot.

I bring up 'Black Iris' on my HUD and quickly infect the bot with it. An upload bar appears and shoots up to 100% in a few seconds. Once it does, the bot immediately spins back and says:

"Vision loss. Protocol unknown. Assistance required."

Then it lurches back, pinwheeling and screaming as it careers into the fountain, spraying a column of water ten feet high. Civilians shriek and scatter, and the bot flails some more, one chrome arm punching straight through a holo-display of neural harmony. The pastel letters shatter into glitter.

"Security," shouts the receptionist. "Security – stop that thing!"

The guards by the elevator rush out from the funneled side-alley, shouting into headsets as they reach into their pockets and pull out tesla guns. At the same time, I peek around the column and, quickly, navigate through all the cameras on this side of the reception area and deactivate them. A timer for fifteen seconds begins ticking down for each, so I say, loudly through the chaos: "Move!"

And we sprint, through the reception area, down the side-alley towards the elevator. There's a door off to the side, and when we get close, it slides open and a woman holding a cup of coffee comes walking out to see what all the fuss is about. My shoulder almost clips hers, hot liquid splashing in a brown arc, and she shrieks, dropping the cup. Fingers yanks me sideways, our cloaks shimmering in the chaos, and the woman stares dumbly at the spreading stain on her blouse, never once realising two ghosts just slipped past her.

We continue our dart for the elevator.

The elevator doors stand wide open, gleaming metal like a throat ready to swallow. Fingers jabs the panel, and for a heartbeat nothing happens. My gut freezes. Then the doors slide shut with a sigh, mercifully drowning out the chaos outside. Inside: a sterile cube, walls slick with brushed steel. A strip light buzzes overhead. It smells of ozone and lemon disinfectant, the kind of smell hospitals wear like perfume.

Fingers exhales sharply, and the elevator begins its slow descent. "Christ, that was close."

I nod, feeling my heart run olympic circles in my chest, and press my back up against the cold steel wall. "That lady: thanks, Fingers." The shrieks from the lobby still ring in my ears, chopped to fragments now but not wholly gone. My brain won't unclench, replaying the moment that woman almost saw us.

"Don't mention it," she says, still catching her breath. "Good on you, disabling all those cameras. Sharp idea overall. I'm proud of you."

"Oh," I say. "Thanks. It all happened so fast."

Although she's invisible, I can sense the smile under all that cloaking. "That's when you're at your best," she says. "When it's fast. When it's messy."

"Thought you preferred it clean?" I let out a shaky laugh, though the sound doesn't feel like mine. The adrenaline still rattles in my bones, and I don't quite know where to put my arm, so I cross it over my chest and stare at the numbers above the door ticking downward: B1…

"I can be dirty if I want to," she says, and then almost immediately: "Well, that came out wrong. Scratch that from your memory."

I laugh a little louder, and before I can tell her that it will never be forgotten, static bursts through the Cloud Room:

"You dookies inside yet?" Dance says.

"We're heading down," Fingers says. "Want us to hook you into the cameras?"

"If you can," says Dance. "But—" The static bursts in my ear again, this time more violent than the previous instances. I wince, tap my neural, and try to re-ping Cloud Room 7.

"Dance?" I say.

"Dance?" Fingers repeats. "Vander? You copy?"

Nothing. Just hiss.

"Shit," I say. "Signal must have died. We're too far down."

"It's okay," she says. "They weren't providing much use anyway. I only hope Dance has enough brain cells left in him to deactivate the alarm in case Carrow goes calling for back-up – you know, in the off-chance we do end up getting caught."

"That guy's an idiot," I say.

"Who are you tellin'?" Fingers says. "Should have left it entirely to Vander. He might not have the best communication skills but I'm sure he can put two-and-two together as an engineer."

My stomach goes cold. "So, what do we do now?"

"What we came to do." Her voice steadies quicker than mine. "We stick to the plan. Together. We might not have an eagle's eye of the place without Dance and Vander, but we should be fine. We just have to be extra careful."

The elevator hums lower, slower, the number ticking down: B2. The lights above stutter once, twice. My pulse kicks with them.

"I meant it, you know," she says suddenly. "About being proud. You've got instincts, Mono. Might be messy, but you've got 'em. Don't sell yourself short."

My throat knots. Compliments from Fingers are rarer than clean air in the Rattlehive. "Thanks," I say, softer than I mean to.

A pause, then her voice, wry: "Don't get used to it."

The elevator rumbles to a complete stop, and the doors slide open. On the other side there's a short hallway. There's not much; it's just grey with a single fluorescent and nothing more. The door, which is locked behind a hand-scanner squared to the right, sure looks wide enough to let through loads of Lumina by the pallet.

Shouldn't be too much of an issue. An easy code-break.

We approach the door, and I bring up 'Manual Override', tap into the hand-scanner security protocol, and…

(Authentication Required)

Well, shit.