Nikki keeps her head down and avoids any eye contact as they traverse her familiar stomping ground and head towards the passageways beneath Mullane. Fortunately, nobody’s passing curiosity survives contact with Alice, who is broadcasting her status as the FNG’s snooper-in-chief. It’s like a deflector shield, making everybody else keep their head down and avoid eye contact.
Nikki falls in behind as they leave the main thoroughfare, her gaze focused on the neat figure of her companion. Alice has been transformed since Nikki fled her apartment, going rogue, breaking rules, breaking laws. These things all seem very human to her; quintessentially human, in fact. And yet she’s seen Omega’s grab, an identical woman carrying out the murder, and Alice seems resigned to the notion that they are both some kind of android. It would sure explain how squeaky clean the girl is, how slavishly adherent to rules and protocols, though her conduct over the past few hours would represent a serious malfunction.
In seeking an explanation, Nikki had been working on the Sherlock Holmes principle that once you’ve ruled out the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. She would have to concede that if someone has developed super-advanced, indistinguishably human-like androids, then the widespread assumption that this was impossible would be the perfect cover. And it would certainly explain a lot if this were indeed Project Sentinel, the deadly secret worth killing so many people for.
Nonetheless, her instincts are telling her there has to be something else. She’s seen a lot of weird things on Seedee, a place where new tech is emerging all the time, but this just seems a leap too far and too fast. If there has been a development as huge as this, she can see the power play in keeping secret the fact that you have effectively created slaves or surrogates who can pass as human. However, a breakthrough like this doesn’t happen overnight, so keeping it secret doesn’t strike her as consistent with the corporate behaviour she is used to observing up here. They would be wanting tax breaks to assist their efforts in developing this revolutionary new tech, not to mention maximising the effect it would have on their share price.
Bottom line is she just isn’t buying it, though admittedly that’s easier for her to say than for Alice. Nikki isn’t the one having to contemplate the possibility that she runs on batteries and might be only a few days old.
“He’s fixed the door,” Alice says as they approach Trick’s den. “Let’s hope he’s beefed up his security too.”
“I can’t see the door,” Nikki reports, her lens not showing the outline she is familiar with from a host of previous visits.
“That’s because you’re Megan Driscoll,” Alice reminds her. “Allow me.”
“Oh yeah, I’m forgetting you and Trick are tight now.”
Trick looks a mess, all beat up. He seems alarmed by the sight of Nikki, like she’s a total stranger and not somebody he’s known for years. Then she remembers she is supposed to be: one, a mass murderer; and two, long gone from here.
“Hey, Trick,” she says quietly.
He manages a crooked smile and shows his guests inside, closing the door behind them. He’s strengthened it and added some bolts. Nikki figures he’s got an emergency exit hidden someplace too.
“Nikki Fixx. Guess you’re the turd that wouldn’t flush. Hey, I like the new duds. You look halfway respectable, and by that I mean totally unrecognisable. What is this, witness protection? Or did you get recruited? How many dudes you gotta kill before they give you a job helping out the FNG?”
“Fuck you, Trick. We’re here to save your ungrateful hide.”
“Save me? From what?”
“You were right,” Alice tells him. “Nikki didn’t kill Giselle or anybody else. Now we’re working together to find out who did.”
“These assholes who took you and beat the shit out of you, Trick. We need to know who they were and what you did for them.”
He physically backs away, stepping closer to the wall.
“Nuh-uh. I already told your new boss, here. I’m not crossing these people.”
“They’re not the ones you need to be afraid of,” Alice tells him.
“You can say that, but fact is I’m more scared of the psychos I know than the devil I don’t.”
“We understand,” Nikki replies. “And we’re not asking you to rat nobody out. Just maybe take a look at a few pictures and help eliminate some people from our inquiries.”
On cue, Alice fires him a series of images from the aftermath at Habitek: six blood-spattered bodies, their twisted faces nonetheless recognisable enough to be identified by his lens.
They both see the revulsion in Trick’s eyes.
“It wasn’t any of these people.”
“Yeah, but I’m betting the ones who took you worked for the late Mr. Martinez here, right?”
He swallows. That’s a yes.
“Told you they’re not the ones you need to be scared of,” Alice says.
“Julio and everybody else in these images got killed because of something called Project Sentinel,” Nikki states. “These people mentioned it when they took you. Everyone who even heard about it has been murdered, meaning that either you’re the evil-genius mastermind behind this—which, with respect, I seriously fucking doubt—or you’re in real trouble. So I ask you again: who were they and what did you do for them?”
Trick looks freaked now, no doubt about it. Two minutes ago he thought the worst thing that could happen was these people coming back. Now he understands the true stakes.
“It was Yash. Yash and two of Julio’s psychos: Bollo and Krug.”
Nikki nods.
“That figures.”
“Who?” Alice asks.
“Yashmin Sardana,” Nikki replies. “A known associate and sometime fuck buddy of the late Mr. Martinez. She handles stolen tech. She’s normally a deft hand at cracking the protection and repurposing hardware. What did she need you for?”
Trick bristles, anxiety running through him like a current. It’s as though he fears they’re watching and listening right now.
“They had this device. I think it might have been one of the machines they link you up to for uploading memory to a mesh.”
“You think?” Nikki asks. “Ain’t you seen one?”
“No. I don’t have a mesh.”
Nikki’s eyes widen. Of all people, she’d have pegged Trick as the last to be a hold-out.
“Why not?”
“Look what I do here. I wasn’t convinced they’re secure. There’s no tech been invented that can’t be hacked, and that shit’s in your head.”
“The security is that you have to go to Neurosophy Labs and be physically connected up,” Nikki says, though as she speaks she realises she is only trying to reassure herself. Like most other folks, she never thought much about this. As long as the only people with the tech were the doctors and scientists at Neurosophy, there didn’t seem any risk. But now …
“You’re telling me somebody managed to boost one of those things?”
“If that’s what it was, yes.”
“This is the secret weapon Freitas was talking about. Not literally a weapon, but something that would give Julio a serious edge, financially.”
“He would have instantly monopolised a black market in illegal memory uploads,” says Alice.
“Except this was something else,” Trick says. “Something different. If it was simply a memory upload device, I’m sure Yash could have handled it. They needed me because I know ways to manipulate the central database. They were using this thing to connect to people, and it did that by piggybacking onto the CDB network.”
“A memory upload device that can connect to people’s lenses?” Nikki asks, though she can’t see how that would possibly work. Lenses connect to the CDB, but they are merely augmentation devices. They render data, they handle comms, they play audiovisual files.
“No. That’s what’s so fucking scary about this. It was connecting to their meshes.”
“That’s impossible,” Nikki insists, though again she is only trying to reassure herself. Even as she speaks she realises Trick is about to tell her why she’s wrong.
“It only worked in maybe one person out of five,” he says. “I noticed it was mostly tech types. Early adopters.”
“People who upgraded to the latest mesh,” Alice suggests.
“That ain’t me,” Nikki says, relieved. “I have a very rigid ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it policy when it comes to that stuff.”
“But what should worry you is that even with the older meshes, it still established a preliminary connection. It just wouldn’t communicate fully with the device after that, like there was some kind of incompatibility.”
“But what could it be connecting to? There’s no airborne receiver on a mesh.”
“Isn’t there? What if that physical interface, and the fact you have to go to Neurosophy and lie down on a bed for six hours … What if that was misdirection to disguise the fact that meshes can be remotely connected?”
Nikki’s hand goes to her scalp involuntarily.
“You don’t have one, if I recall,” he says to Alice.
“No. I couldn’t stand the thought of any artificial processes influencing my actions.”
If she is an android, it appears the G2S unit does have a sense of humour after all.
“So what were Yash and her buddies uploading to people once you worked your magic?”
“They weren’t uploading anything. That isn’t what it did. They were controlling people.”
There is a silence in the room, enough for them to be able to hear the distant thump of music from one of the joints upstairs.
“You did not just say that.”
“Man, I wish I had a mesh so I could go and get my memory of this shit erased, but I don’t, so I’m stuck with the truth. This machine allowed them to make people do things.”
“Like, follow commands?”
“No, it looked more complex, more sophisticated, though the way they were using it sure wasn’t. It had a thousand settings and variables, looked like it would take an expert to operate it properly—however you’d define properly when you’re talking about such a technological abomination. Yash was trying to understand it, but the other two assholes were like kids messing with an instrument they knew they couldn’t play: they hit all the extremes just to see what would happen.”
“Extremes like aggression and sexual desire?” Nikki suggests.
“Exactly.”
“Klaws,” says Alice, up to speed.
“What?”
“Alice saw this straight-arrow type volunteer for a chamber-fight. It got very messy.”
“I saw it,” Trick says. “Through his eyes, his lens. Kept coming at the prize fighter no matter how many times she put him down. Eventually he jacked a scalpel from the surgeon on-site and started cutting people up.”
“I also heard about a woman in Spiral …”
“Strips off and starts fucking strangers on the bar top, yeah. They were having a high old time with that shit. They couldn’t merely control them via their meshes, they could also tap into the victims’ lenses and watch the show live. They must have got it working in some limited capacity before they came to me, because I heard one of them talk about it. He said, ‘This is so much more fun than with that pilot.’”
“I saw reports of fights and disturbances all over my Seguridad feed around that time,” Nikki says. “Just thought it was a wild Saturday night.”
Trick shakes his head gravely.
“You suggested earlier that this isn’t ‘literally’ a weapon, but it literally is. That’s why I’ve been so scared. It’s not simply that this was stolen and Julio’s people weren’t supposed to have it. Nobody is supposed to have it. And I knew that whoever created it would go to extreme lengths to prevent anyone from finding out it even exists.”
Alice sends Nikki a look. Just like Project Sentinel.
Nikki’s thoughts turn to Slovitz, the missing scientist. He worked for Neurosophy, and she’s pretty sure he’s dead too, though nobody will ever find his body. Somebody went to a lot of trouble and spent a lot of money to ensure nobody even went looking for it.
Nikki turns to Trick.
“You got like a dozen other identities, haven’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, if you got someplace you can lie low, where nobody knows who you really are, I’d recommend you disappear.”
“Trust me, I’m gone.”
“But just before you leave …”
Nikki reboots her rig and sees the familiar and comforting sight of multiple aliases waiting to be exploited.
She would thank Trick, but he booked the moment he handed her back the hacked wrist unit, leaving the two of them in his workshop.
“Will it trigger some alert if I access my own profile?” she asks Alice.
“Shouldn’t do. It was suspended but I had it unfrozen. All the alerts were cancelled when we threw you in the clink.”
Nikki takes the plunge and gets a rapid illustration of how quickly Seedee forgets about you once you’re gone. In the past, if she was incommunicado for any length of time, like even a few hours of sleep, there’d be a dozen messages waiting for her when she woke up: people impatiently trying to get hold of her, all assuming she was on their phase. Right now, there is one solitary message, and it’s from nobody: sent from a monitor terminal rather than a lens.
Needing some validation that her identity hasn’t been entirely purged from people’s minds, she takes a look.
It’s a video message from Zola. That’s why it’s from a terminal. It was sent not long after Nikki left the Catacombs, maybe around the time Nikki was being thrown in a cell.
Zola looks distraught. Her face appears blotchy from tears, but as she turns her head Nikki can see that some of the discolouration is actually bruising. Her voice sounds choked, tearful.
“I heard some bad things about you, Nikki, but I figure you’re the only hope a ghost like me has. If there’s any way you still can help me, I’m begging you. They took Amber.”