Read Part 3…

“Look, all I’m saying is that people don’t think I’m some swell guy anyway. What, you think the bosses expect me going steady with a nice dame who’s my age? They know I’m not that kinda guy. They ask me to bump off a stoolie and I do it.”

The night sky was overcast, city lights illuminating patches of yellow and red against the gloom. A power station’s security lights cast harsh shadows through a chain link fence and onto the stoops of abandoned houses across the road. Silence was cut by the buzz of transformers and a deep voice. A large man stood in front of the door of the house with the fewest broken windows, spinning a knife between his fingers with one hand and holding a telephone receiver in his other.

“They ask me to guard a house and I do it. So who cares if I enjoy a virtual girl every now and then?”

“That’s not the point, ya’ mook.” A crackling voice echoed from the antique communication device. “I hooked you up with my VR guy so you could have a little fun. I didn’t know you were gonna have fun with little girls.”

“You got some stupid kind of point there, buddy. I ain’t hurtin’ nobody in those games. And, like I said, I hurt real people all the time. So who cares?” He stabbed the knife into the wood door so that it stuck in place and shifted the phone to his other hand. “Besides, you’re the real creep, messing around with that kid’s head and all.”

“Hey, you don’t discuss what’s going on in here. Not even on the secure lines. Now quit bothering me and keep an eye out for Glummy. It’s almost morning and he ain’t back yet!”

The large man hung up the phone, took a deep breath, glanced down the street, and collapsed to the floor. Jane Brass peaked out of a broken window next door, pocketing her nanobot blowgun. So they haven’t heard about Glummy, she thought. They must really be keeping this place off the grid. She doubled-checked her infrared scanner — just two people in the basement of the house — then hopped out the window into the alley between houses.

The front door was locked, but she pinched the keys from the gently-snoozing thug on the front porch. The inside was somehow dirtier than the street. Jane dragged the unconscious man in and propped him against a dusty vinyl chair from the twenty-one-eighties. Carefully stepping around broken furniture she found the stairs to the basement. Before descending she adjusted the settings of the location scrambler on her belt. Set to maximum, the scrambler obscured her appearance with a holographic projection and distorted the sound of her voice. Jane could feel the drain on her system, and the Ov3rcl0ck hangover was not helping. She swallowed a yawn and started down the stairs.

The basement had received all the care and attention that was neglected in the rest of the house. The walls were freshly painted with an anti-static coating, reflecting beams of simulated-sunlight. A solid-glass desk stood in the center, supporting eight NanoLite monitors which seemed to be interfacing with a computer on the floor. Jane could not believe how large the machine was: nearly a foot tall and six inches square. Actual, physical cables radiated out from the computer, the largest of which exited the basement through a pipe in the wall. Jane could see a hospital bed on the other side of the desk, into which most of the cables were plugged. Various machines were attached to the bed, towering over a small boy. Leon was lying flat, eyes closed, with only his his hands and feet twitching occasionally.

Jane began to cross the room when she noticed what was displayed on the monitors: not medical information, but instead various scoreboards. Before she could figure it out a flushing sound came from one corner of the room. Jane ducked behind the desk as a section of wall slid open and a young man exited a hidden bathroom. He was wearing neon spandex pants and a tweed v-neck shirt. A small box attached to his glasses was projecting a holographic image of a hat around his head, which Jane supposed was meant to look like an alligator-skin fedora. Despite his offensive appearance, he seemed to be unarmed. Then Jane realized she was looking at him through a glass desk, and he was looking right back at her.

“I see you had trouble deciding which decade had the worst fashion sense.” She stood up, brandishing her blowgun. “Or is this what kids think gangsters look like?”

“Hey man, back off. It’s a hacker thing, like, real ironic, see? Why don’t you turn off that disguise so I can see what you’re wearing?” The kid was playing it cool, but Jane could see the sweat under his holo-hat as he tried to focus his eyes on her. “And I ain’t no kid, no way!”

“Well you must be very grown-up if old Glum is letting you play with all this equipment.” She gestured at the bed with her blowgun. “Don’t you need a license to install brain-interfaces? I would hate to have to tell your mother. Now, be a good boy and disconnect those awful machines.”

The hacker glanced at Leon, then the phone on the desk, then back at Jane’s gun. “I… don’t think you want me to do that. They’re… in game.” He pointed at one of the monitors.

Jane recognized a map of a virtual battlefield. Well, short my sleeves, this is all about that stupid game. She kept her blowgun trained on the man and backed over to Leon’s side. There was cybernetic coil around his right ear, a perfectly normal interface for a kid to have. Attached to his temple, however, was a large ethernet cable, somehow modified to fit Leon’s brain. “Just, take it out. Now. I’m taking him out of here.”

“But he’ll be st—”

“Take it out! Now!” The distortion in her voice cut out, and Jane’s shout echoed through the basement. She looked at her arm to make sure the visual disguise was still running. She raised the blowgun to her mouth threateningly.

The young man cautiously made his way to the other side of the bed and adjusted some dials on the machines. After a minute, he finally removed the cable from Leon’s head and stepped back. Jane immediately blasted the hacker with a stream of nanobots then scooped up the boy in her arms and took to the stairs.

Leon seemed oblivious as Jane hauled him to the front of the house. He was stiff in her arms, but his fingers twitched as if they were busy in his imagination. As Jane began to open the front door she heard the phone outside start ringing. The gangster in the chair by the door coughed, then stood bolt upright, eyes wild. She started through the door, but he landed a kick to her leg that made her stumble and drop Leon. Her location scrambler cut out as she hit the ground. The power surge made her robotic fist and lungs clench uncontrollably as she tried to recover from the fall.

The man fumbled after her, suppressing a hacking cough. At first he made for the ringing telephone, but then he caught a look at her undisguised form, scrambling at his feet. He turned on her, a smirk growing on his face.

“Well…” cough, cough, “look what we have here. What’s a broad like you doing in a—”

The gangster coughed blood. He clutched at the back of his neck and pulled out his knife. They both stared at it, confused, before he collapsed as the phone stopped ringing. In the place the gangster had been standing, Jane saw Leon, now standing, eyes still closed. Blindly, he pointed at the door, then the dead man, then saluted her and returned to his sporadic twitching.

Jane grabbed the knife off floor and delicately wiped off any fingerprints. She put the weapon back beside its late owner, for the second time that night. With an uncomfortable chuckle, she looked at Leon.

“Hey kid, you’re pretty sharp.” He made no response. “Looks like he got your point,” she tried, but Leon was a statue. “Fair enough,” she murmured, taking the boy back into her arms. The street was still quiet except for the power station as she carried Leon through deserted alleys. Jane could see the sun beginning to rise as she made her way back to Rick’s.

 

To be continued…