Cumulus (17 page)

According to the video, the man didn’t exist.

Frederick crossed his arms over his tuxedoed chest. The lines on his face had deepened. His lips were pressed together in a tight line.

There was a moment of silence.

Lilly took a shuddering breath. “If it weren’t for these photos,” she pressed both hands onto the tabletop, “I would be doubting my own sanity. But they’re real.
He’s
real.”

The look Frederick gave her x-rayed her soul.

“I had my video guy take a look,” said Henok. “It’s subtle, but the footage has been doctored. Look at this.” He rewound to the coffee vendor, zoomed in, and cycled backward and forward through time. The vendor stirred the pot, tasted a sample, and looked around. Then he stirred the pot, tasted a sample, and looked around again. “It’s a loop,” said Henok, playing through it all again. “It’s the same footage played back over itself and automatically meshed into all versions and angles from every Cumulus device. The video guy says that it’s being done algorithmically. It’s all automatic.”

Penelope inserted a pencil into her mouth and started chewing on the end of it. “From what my compsci team can gather, the Cumulus system must have various tags identifying this guy—facial recognition, tracking his own devices, geolocation, anything associated with whatever stealth accounts he has. When the system sees a tag, it knows to wipe him from any data streams associated with that time and place, repairing the overall surveillance records with looped footage. That’s why we don’t see him on screen. Because he ordered the Fleet that pulled up next to Lilly, we don’t see that Fleet on screen. It’s been scraped completely—you can’t even find it if you track back. That’s also why Lilly wasn’t able to photograph him from her Cumulus phone. And why we can’t scan the photos. The minute they touch Cumulus, the system destroys them.”

Frederick ran a finger along his chin. “So the only reason we have any evidence of his presence at all,” he said, “is because—”

“Of this,” said Lilly, holding up the camera slung around her neck. “This is a Yashica Lynx
14
with an aftermarket Zenitar Russian lens. It’s great for getting a nice shallow depth of field, perfect for black-and-white shots. But it’s terrible for spyware that depends on every device being connected to the internet.” She waggled the camera and couldn’t suppress a grin. “The analog heel of a digital Achilles.”

His lieutenants looked bemused but Frederick’s forehead furrowed. “So, what we’re really talking about here is a virtual phantom,” he said. “A man invisible to the digital universe even as he’s murdering people in the flesh. For a world dependent on digital investigative tools, he’s essentially a ghost.”

Lilly, Henok, and Penelope exchanged a glance. Frederick might not be technically inclined, but he had gotten the gist.

“In layman’s terms,” said Penelope, “that’s not too far off the mark.” She replaced the pencil in a pocket of her jumpsuit.

“Which begs the question,” said Frederick, leaning across the table and impaling them with a fierce stare, “how do we find, expose, and destroy this motherfucker?”

Lilly raised a tentative hand.

“I have an idea,” she said.

30

HUIAN RELEASED CHANDRA
with orders to draft a statement, and Karl to monitor the situation from the command center.

Then she leaned against the edge of her desk and stared into the roaring flames that danced on the display. This was no good at all. These were the kinds of insurgencies that Cumulus would ultimately render irrelevant. This would never happen in the Green Zone. There would be no impetus for social uprising when society was fully optimized. Thankfully, even this bump in the road wouldn’t affect the Green Zone communities. Karl had hundreds of armed Security officers stationed at every possible entrance. The chaos wouldn’t spread beyond the Slums. And the Slums were chaotic to begin with.

Nevertheless, this was not something she wanted developing right in Cumulus’s backyard. And she didn’t know what to think about the connection to Sara Levine. A shadow fell over her soul.
Take care of them.
She had said that to Graham the evening Vera had left. The instruction was decidedly vague. But a certain level of ambiguity was necessary in sensitive situations. If anything had proved itself true over the years, it was that the only person she could truly rely on was herself. If the universe conspired to challenge her vision for Cumulus, she needed to take commensurate action to defend that vision. It was simply too important to leave in the hands of fate.

The door behind her clicked shut softly. “I was just thinking of you,” she said, turning.

Graham raised an eyebrow. He approached the desk, took a seat, and crossed one leg over the other. Huian was struck by the contrast with Chandra’s entrance just an hour earlier. Where Chandra had charged into the room and immediately demanded Huian’s attention, Graham’s stride was measured and his demeanor calm and unassuming. His very lack of ardor was the most fascinating part of him.

She sat opposite him. “I assume you’ve been following the situation in West Oakland?”

He bobbed his head once.

“And?”

He raised that eyebrow again. “Demonstrations like this are not uncommon, particularly in areas with high Gini coefficients.”

“Gini coefficients?”

“The most common ratio of economic inequality,” he said. “A coefficient of zero means perfect income equality. Everyone makes precisely the same amount of money. A coefficient of one means perfect income inequality, one person captures all the income in a society and everyone else is left with nothing. The coefficient here in the States has been growing for decades. We’ve become more and more unequal. In terms of income inequality, we now more closely resemble Latin America than Western Europe. Whenever wealth is so unevenly distributed in a population, social tension is bound to arise. When social tension grows, protests and other forms of unrest simply become a part of the fabric of the nation.”

Huian frowned. “I didn’t request a lesson in economics. You know why I’m asking about the protest.”

“What? Sara Levine?” Graham shook his head sadly. “A tragedy, isn’t it? Cut off in the middle of a promising legal career. Very unfortunate. As to the protest, you never know what little spark might trigger this kind of thing. The straw that broke the camel’s back, am I right?”

She drummed her fingers on the desktop. “Graham, when I told you to—”

“Ma’am?” he interrupted, uncrossing his legs and leaning forward. “If I may? I have helivaced
VIP
s out of war zones, overthrown dictators, and infiltrated foreign intelligence services. In short, I’ve been through a lot and worked with and against some of the most skilled and formidable professionals, alive and dead. In all that time, one golden rule has made itself ever more evident.” He held up an index finger. “Policymakers must have plausible deniability. That means I will never confirm or deny information that might jeopardize you. Forgive the Beltway-speak, but you’re the one making the calls and I’m the one solving the problems. Between us lies a sacred buffer, a line we should never cross. Just do your job and let me do mine.”

Huian spun her chair
180
degrees and flicked the windows to fully transparent. Clouds were still scudding across the sky. High-altitude winds had taken their fluffy mass from earlier that morning and spread them out into long, paper-thin wisps. She could press him. But did she want to know the answers that lay below his imperturbable veneer? Even if she set aside potential criminal and civil liability, wouldn’t that just be another form of micromanagement? From the day he’d walked into her office for the first time, she couldn’t deny that Graham had always produced results. He had untangled that regulatory mess in Beijing, warned them of a potential executive hire’s history of fraud, and given her timely insights into the operations of Cumulus’s closest competitors. Plus, he always seemed to know things about her own direct reports even before she found out about them. Had it been wise to bring him on and approve the Ghost Program? Every leader needed someone they could really rely on. And he was right that geopolitical influence was migrating from its historic seat within national governments into the private sector. Beyond the windows, a flock of gulls glided over the Cumulus campus.

“Alright,” she said, swiveling her chair back to face him. “I’ll let you do your job. But be careful. We’re a tech company, not a spy agency. I don’t want us getting our hands dirty, and I certainly don’t want blowback.”

“Of course.”

“And speaking of potential blowback, this protest is not good news. Whether or not you’re right about economic inequality being the systemic problem, the fact is that Sara Levine’s death sparked this whole thing. And that blog post tries to paint Cumulus into the picture.”

He waved a hand. “It’s all wildly circumstantial. The only thing that post does is say that she was working on a case targeting Cumulus and that she died. The only thing linking those two facts is a clever narrative.”

“A clever narrative can go a surprisingly long way,” she said. “Just ask any organized religion.”

“It’s bullshit and it’s temporary,” he said. “And it’s anonymous. It’s not even real journalism. Just wait for the next news cycle. Everyone will forget about it and move on.”

“From what Chandra tells me, its anonymity is one of the reasons it’s going viral. You may have a good rationale for not sharing the details of our involvement or lack thereof with any of this. But someone is trying to rope us into this mess, and we need to find out who they are.
You
need to find out who they are.”

Graham touched two fingers to his forehead in a mock salute. “Your wish is my command.”

“I think you’re confusing Gini with genie.”

31

LILLY GAZED OUT AT THE STREETS
of her city as the truck rumbled along beneath her. The cab was a much higher vantage point than she was used to. It felt almost like she was looking down from a second-story window. The streets around the warehouse were empty. Everyone in the Slums was honing in on the protest, leaving their neighborhoods vacant. Trucks just like this one were going out to every part of every Slum in the Bay Area right now.

The preparations had taken all day. The amount of logistics required was impressive. Henok’s design staff had been working nonstop to get every detail right on the different formats. They had monopolized every specialized printer they could get their hands on. Regional ink supplies were dwindling.

She was squeezed in beside the driver and Frederick. His organization used battered old trucks like this one because they were harder to track than Fleets, which were constantly connected. Frederick smelled faintly of rosemary. It was his people who had orchestrated the production, and his money that had paid for it. As soon as the prints had dried, groups of men piled them into trucks on the loading dock of the warehouse. One truck would rumble off, and an empty one would take its place, its cavernous bed ready for more pieces of what was perhaps the most ambitious public art project ever attempted.

Lilly turned her head to the passenger window to hide a grin. She had always felt apart. Having dead parents will do that to a person. She had been only twenty when they died. As soon as the press found out that the other vehicle had been a self-driving car, they had turned what should have been a family tragedy into a media circus. Lilly’s friends and relatives hadn’t known what to do with her. Every conversation had been tainted by undercurrents of pity and awkwardness. Lilly couldn’t blame them. And, to their credit, she had always been a bit of a loner. Not in the sense that she didn’t enjoy the company of others. She just never understood why she should do what society seemed to expect from her. She had no interest in engineering, business, law, medicine, or any of the other subjects that offered real career paths. She had fallen in love with photography on that day in high school. That passion hadn’t waned. But what were you supposed to do as an unemployed twenty-year-old who loved taking pictures with retro equipment?

She used Lancer to land whatever jobs she could. Weddings ended up being the only thing that helped her make ends meet. But shooting weddings deepened her isolation. Anybody who worked service jobs could attest to the same thing. All these people were as happy as they could be and surrounded by loved ones. Most partied hard. They paid Lilly to capture the joy she didn’t share. They weren’t her friends. They were a happy group of wealthy strangers who forced her to think how inadequate her meager existence really was. They were popping bottles of expensive champagne while she was looking forward to a lonely dinner of instant noodles in a cramped apartment deep in the Slums. She knew much of it was her own fault. If she had wanted to make money, she should have studied up to become an attorney, engineer, or financier. But no matter how centered she tried to be, it was difficult to prevent resentment from slinking into her subconscious.

Sara’s death was still too shocking to process. Lilly couldn’t believe she would never see her friend again. But she felt a strange sense of fierce pride. When she saw what had happened to Sara, Lilly hadn’t just frozen in panic or collapsed into a blubbering mess. She had taken action. She had shadowed the killer. She had gone to the police. She had gone
beyond
the police. Now, she was making a real difference and increasing the pressure for the investigation to yield real results. She had uncovered key evidence, and was helping put together the puzzle that seemed to lurk behind this entire debacle. And with these pictures, she would go from a fly on the wall to a fly in the ointment. That was something Sara would respect. You didn’t throw yourself at the mercy of justice. Justice helped those who helped themselves.