Out of the Black (8 page)

Before Ping's elevator had reached even the third floor, the man in the lobby pulled the phones from his ears and paused the movie he'd been watching. For a moment, his gaze led on the frozen image on the screen: Roy Batty, leader of the outlaw Replicants, stood in the pouring rain, a white bird folded in his hand. Blood colored his face, but a look of resigned sadness softened his eyes and an odd smile pulled at his lips.

A similar mix of mirth and melancholy passed through the man's eyes as he closed and stowed his tablet. He stood and turned to look back toward the elevator bank, his face set with grim purpose.

***

Jin swam like a fish through the crowded sea of humanity, lost in the lights and sound and the fury of her tainted blood. Around her, the dance floor's lights painted every surface with dazzling patterns. The music shifted and fluttered around her- everything designed to maximize her experience.

The club was impressive, but the real show was the people; it was like having a family, she assumed. Everyone she saw, she understood. It was like she had somehow passed through them, coming away with some sense of their essence. This was magic, the magic of the twenty-first century, the magic of the mind. It was like Mr. Spock said once: "there is nothing real outside our perception of reality." Spock... deep.

She slithered and danced among the other fish in the crackling electric sea, thinking happy thoughts, feeling faux compassion, simulated empathy- loving everyone she saw. The energy around her made her want to dance harder, faster. She was an expanding mushroom cloud of love, a fiery flower blooming bright, even as the outer petals fell away to ash.

Then something changed, like the shiver of a predator slipping silently into the water- the school knew, even if the individual fish could see nothing. Around her, the crowd still smiled and danced, the music still thrummed, but some of the eyes that floated around her were set a little harder, some of the smiles seemed tighter, colder. Some of them felt it too: something hungry was in here with them.

She was being watched- eyes from the darkness bored in, singling her out. The friendly, energetic music that still surrounded her seemed to acquire the character of a suspense video soundtrack. The broken, sinister tones were still hidden a few layers down, but emerging like a slowly drawn knife.

Jin felt suddenly exposed, one side of an open doorway with light coming from behind her and an impenetrable darkness across the threshold. There was no way to close the door, no way to run back into the light. Around her, darkness and laughter. "Couldn't find any Beta." Mara's voice hissed out of Jin's memory.

***

After a seemingly endless elevator ride spent under the severe oppression of a harpsichord and tambourine rendition of Jimmy Hendrix's
Are You Experienced
, the door opened into a dim hallway. Ping navigated the twisted and dividing hallways until he found 1413.

He took a deep breath and knocked. Within seconds he heard a click as a hand was set on the knob from inside. Strange, he thought, at six on Sunday morning, he'd expected to drag Ahmed out of bed.

He waited. Perhaps twenty seconds passed with no further action from inside. Behind the door, someone lurked, possibly with his hand still on the knob, probably staring at Ping through the peephole.

Waiting and watched, head filled with a repeating loop of harpsichord Hendrix, Ping felt the hall lengthen away from him in both directions. The door before him seemed to gather signiance under his stare. Small nicks and scratches traced over its faux wood surface, the documentation of previous and inscrutable violence.

Perhaps the unreality that had governed the world beneath the overpass had reached out, through sun and the freshness of morning, to touch this place. Perhaps the lurker behind the door was a part of that violent unreality. Perhaps the rational explanations that Ping came here seeking were the unreality.

He put on a more earnest smile and knocked again.

After twenty more seconds of silence from inside, Ping pulled out his badge and held it before the peephole. "Police. I'm looking for Alexander Ahmed."

There was a muted chirp from behind the door- probably Ping's credentials being verified through the lurker's tablet- followed by more waiting, apparently followed by a decision.

The door cracked open and one eye appeared beneath a patch of glossy chrome hair. "What is it?" The kid asked with a comically bad approximation of sleepy cool, his mellow expression betrayed by furtive eyes.

"May I come in?" Ping gestured toward the door.

"You have a warrant?"

"Do I need one?" Ping arched an eyebrow dubiously.

"Uh... no." The kid looked confused by the question. "Just trying to understand the parameters of our interface."

"Parameters...?" It was Ping's turn to be confused.

The kid tried for an affable chuckle, but hit nervous laughter dead center. "Come on in."

The door opened into a dim world of efficiency and clutter. The lighting was indirect and low. A combination living room and office was separated from a small kitchen by a counter with a row of cupboards above it. There was precision in the arrangement of the sparse furniture and the few tasteful hangings on the slate colored walls.

Over this order was a seemingly recent layer of short-term debris: drink containers, instant food packages, and more drink containers. Dirty dishes clustered around the sink and littered an expensive looking computer desk. The coffee table was dominated by a decorative bowl of antique metal keys. A discarded jacket was rumpled on the couch.

"All-nighter?" Ping asked, examining the clutter.

"Sure... multi-nighter." the kid said. "It's rare and special when I have policemen or firemen over... can I interest you in some coffee or cornflakes? Sorry, I'm out of donuts."

"Cornflakes please." Ping said, "cream, no sugar."

Smiling, the kid directed him toward the couch. "Make yourself at home, detective..."

"Bannon." Ping moved the coat and sat on the couch facing the door as Alexander headed for the kitchen.

"So detective Bannon, how can I help you?" he said amid the clink of bowls.

"Do you know a Peter Sieberg?"

"Nope. He's not one of my students, is he?"

"I'm not sure. You know Dr. Lutine I assume."

"Ivo? Yeah, he's my boss. Great guy." He was rounding the counter with two bowls. "Not the kind of guy who usually brings the police to m apartment at six in the morning though." He handed Ping a bowl and sat down on the chair across the coffee table.

"What's this about?" made it around his first bite.

"I think I'm here to help you." Ping said, picking up his spoon.

"Ivo sent you?"

"Not exactly. I think you're in trouble." Ahmed stopped chewing. Ping let that hang in the air as he took his first bite. After he swallowed, he said, "You make a mean bowl of cornflakes."

"Thanks," Ahmed said around the same half chewed bite. "Police trouble?"

"I think so, but I also think that might not be the worst of your troubles."

"Meaning...?"

Ping dropped his spoon into his bowl and fished in his jacket pocket. He brought out a chromed tablet and placed it next to the bowl of old metal keys on the coffee table.

"What's that?"

"You're the computer expert, you tell me." Ping took another bite. Then another as the silence lengthened. The kid's knuckles turned white around his bowl and fear seemed to be pulling at his eyes, Ping was pretty sure he was regretting opening the door. Ping was struck by the image of being in another doorway. Ahmed was on the other side and examining him through the peephole. He had his hand on the knob, but couldn't decide if he should let Ping in. Ping left him to decide as he continued to eat, his crunching filling the deepening silence.

Ahmed put down his bowl and picked up the chromed tablet. He extended it and turned it on. He made a few pokes with the stylus. "Locked."

"Really? Can you explain that for me?"

The kid looked confused, "It's not mine. Am I supposed to be able to decrypt it or something?"

"No," Ping set down his empty bowl, "I am."

He let that sink in as he paused. "It didn't yield to a warrant key, and I can't figure how that is. I mean, you'd have to be a Rumbaugh semaphore to figure how to do something like that eh?"

Ahmed looked relieved. "Wow, so now I'm a hacker... okay." He laughed, shaking his head. "So you read my record. I left computers behind man."

Ping's eyes went to the computer desk, then back to Ahmed.

"Touché. Mostly behind then."

"And why was that? Why give up so much money and prestige? You could have had it all."

"All of what? Money? Some kind of fourteen-hour-a-day grind? That's not what life's about. Didn't your mom ever tell you that?" He dropped the tablet on the table and sat back, crossing his arms.

"Actually she did. Though she could never explain why a prodigy would suddenly throw away his gift." Ping smiled at the irony. He actually could understand why a prodigy might not follow their gift as a profession. He realized he had paused for too long, so he concluded with "Mozart composed until the day he died."

"Yeah, now
that
was a happy ending. Maybe he should have written music for fun and spent more time with his kids."

"So now you only program for fun. Is encryption hacking fun? Are you one of those guys who get a rush from toying with prison time?"

"Believe me, I don't need any more rush in my life right now. Again, what's this got to do with me? This isn't my tablet and I didn't hack it for thrills or cash. Why are we talking?"

Ping steepled his fingers and thought about how to continue. "Where were you last night?"

"Right here. I s'pose the change logs for my files could verify that, but you'd prolly think I hacked them too." His glance indicated the computer desk.

"Programming for fun?" Ping asked.

"Definitely not grading papers. Why?"

"Patience. There's some more stuff I need to ask before I can say anything... it's a cop thing." Ping smiled reassuringly. He was pretty sure the kid knew a lot more than he let on. However he was growing more certain that Ahmed didn't know anything about the scene under the bridge. He wanted to get out of inquisition mode before he dropped the bad news.

"Did you get along well with Dr. Lutine?"

"
Did
I..." the kid trailed off. Oops. "You said '
Did
I'." His eyes seemed to glaze with imagined possibilities.

Ping raised his hands for calm. He was going to have to be more careful, "That's not..."

"Oh...my..." Alexander's eyes focused on the tablet resting on the table. "That's Ivo's tablet, isn't it... when?"

"Two this morning." Ping said. "He and his driver were killed in their car just west of the city."

"His driver?" There was an uncertain pause. "Peter Sieberg? Is that who you said before?"

"So you did know him?" Ping prompted.

"No...yes. I think I knew him, but not by that name." There was a blank stare of shock on his face, as if connections were breaking in his mind, leaving him numb.

Or perhaps the connections were forming. "How many other people did you find dead with them?" It was Ping's turn to be shocked.

"How did you...?"

"More than twenty?" The kid looked him dead in the eye.

"We're not sure, the revised count is now between eleven and fifteen... there's a lot of pieces."

"Good!" Ahmed slammed his fist on the coffee table so hard that a few of the keys fell from the bowl and clinked across the glass tabletop. Ahmed looked around the room, face belying an internal struggle. His eyes were glistening with unspent tears, but just when Ping was sure he was going to break down, he clutched the couch's arm and spoke in a decisive tone.

"I'm a dead man." Alexander's eyes locked on Ping's- a drowning man casting about for help, "Dead. And I'm not too sure that you aren't dead too. If Ivo's dead... if they're
both
dead, we're just as dead."

"I don't know- they're pretty dead." Ping said shaking his head, remembering.

Alexander nodded ominously, and there came a charged moment of silence into which an otherwise innocent sound slithered.

From outside, a key slid into the door's lock.

***

Jin had a mother, but she wasn't here now. No one was left to protect her. Though people surrounded her twitching body on the nightclub floor, no one could turn on lights that would dispel these shadows. There was no refuge from the dark, glistening insects that bored through her.

The swarm of jittering insects continued to pour through the door from darkness. More of her light went out and she was in another place- five years old, running into her mother's room well past midnight. She'd fled the terror of sleep, nightmares still clinging to her like her wet clothes. She knew there was an intruder in the house. Unseen, unheard- but she
knew
he was there.

But now mother's bed was empty and no covers were deep enough to hide her from this darkness.

Jin screamed like the little girl she had become again. The darkness was all around her, pressing inward. The intruder was here, stalking down the hallways of her mind, blackening everything it touched.

Her body convulsed. It screamed incoherently, clawing at its own flesh. Around it, the circle of jaded dancers widened. They knew the drill. Three bouncers built like trees arrived. The cops and ambulance had already been called. She'd become a statistic.

***

The dual tones of both Ping's guns unlocking sounded nearly simultaneously. They were in his hands, thrust out towards the door. He was off the couch before the door cracked open and moving sideways to keep the opening door between himself and the intruder as long as possible.

Ahmed was still on his couch. His arms had flown out to the sides in surprise at Ping's quick action, but then he'd frozen. His eyes were wide with shock, staring at Ping. Behind him, the door swung wide and light spilled in from the hallway, overwhelming the room's dim lights.