Roo'd (30 page)

Cass made it back to the hotel first. Fede and Cessus came later, having changed clothes in a tiny public porta-potty before vanishing with the slowly dissipating crowds. The media frenzy was in full swing by the time they left, but the ambulances that came and went told them enough. They'd seen Xing come out with Marcus, carried on a pair of stretchers hooked together. Everyone had ignored each other. That much, at least, had been prearranged.

Now they stood in the doorway; worried, tired, and scared. Cass sat on the bed, stabbing at the tiny monitor hanging on the wall in front of her, flipping through feeds.

"What?" she asked.

"You get it?" asked Cessus. Cass held up her hand. It was wrapped in thick wads of toilet paper, bloody. She turned and picked up something heavy, tossed it to him.

"Enjoy it" she said, and turned back to the terminal.

Cessus hefted the old magnetic drive in one hand. He and Fede looked at each other.

"What the fuck is this?" he asked.

"A disk drive. Circa 2000. That idiot had an ancient machine without a single current port on it. Xing's toy was useless and there was no way I could have made it out of there carrying the case it came in".

"So you unscrewed it and pulled this out?" asked Fed.

"No" she said, standing up and brushing past them on her way to the bathroom. "I didn't have a screwdriver."

Tonx was on his way in, wiping his hands on his pants as she went out, and he gave her a wide berth.

"Hey" he said. "Think you can do anything with that?"

"This is ancient" said Cessus, still standing by the doorway. "I haven't used one since I was a kid. If she just yanked it out there's a chance she nuked some of it. And who knows what sort of security it had… "

"It isn't likely it had any. Unless he did some fancy wiring" Tonx held up both hands "and I know he may have - but if he didn't the whole thing should just be there. I did some searches for old manuals when we got back. Xing ought to be able to help us."

"Security through obsolescence" murmured Cessus. "Motherfucker."

"Not so clever enough that she couldn't just walk in there and take it" said Fed.

"She didn't just 'walk in there'" said Tonx. "The case was
steel
. And it had funky screws nobody uses these days. It
was
clever. If she hadn't had a temper she would've been caught. We wouldn't have anything."

"That's assuming we can get this thing to work" said Cessus. "And pretty clearly they know we're after them now."

Tonx nodded, turned towards the terminal. "Pretty clearly."

The media made a huge show out of the whole fiasco, running the clip of Marcus covering the Lolita with his arm just before being shocked over and over again. The clip of him tearing the arms off the last two guards before he went down was even more popular, albeit on the underground networks only. It became the hottest download of the month in less than eight hours, and advertisers were salivating for Marcus to be well enough to talk before he'd even come out of surgery. Then it was revealed that the guards were working for a government employee, which made it all the more scandalous. Due to government regulations the reports weren't allowed to specify the relationship, but because the guards were privately hired they could still run the story. And run it they did. An unruly public that was already irritated by slowed networks now discovered what sort of people were running them. It didn't cause riots - riots weren't popular in China anymore - but the public discontent was felt far up the food chain.

None of which meant anything to them. What
was
news to them was that Poulpe was missing. He'd checked in with Xing as promised on the way to the run, but disappeared from contact afterwards. Tonx was worried the government had gotten a hold of Poulpe so he'd pulled them out of the hotel and into some spare warehouse space next to Otaku. Marcus wasn't going anywhere, ensconced in a hospital bed and surrounded 24/7 by fawning admirers in black petticoats and publicly addressable comms, cameras on full-stream over subsidized bandwidth.

"thwith hearth" he'd told Fed, thumping his chest. He'd bitten the tip of his tongue off.

Now they were locked away, hiding sleepless trying to get to the data they had stolen. At three in the morning a few days later, in the front workroom where Xing and Fede and Cessus had first met, the three of them sat with Tonx and scanned the drive's contents. They'd gotten it to talk to an old OS-emulator they'd downloaded from a specialist in London. Cessus had had to pay for it from a private account as they'd run out of backing funds.

"For my collection" he'd shrugged. "You can pay me back when we pull this off."

The drive was intact and completely vulnerable. There were two partitions on the drive, one of them locked down tight with a modern encryption system. It was crackable, but would take a very long time, and they could only get the data piece by piece. Knowing what bits were useful would be trial and error.

Then there was the other partition. Not buried in the encrypted system, not part of the OS, it contained a simple, old-style web page. The web page had a password requirement, but using the emulator they were able to run a few million tries from dictionaries over it and had it open in minutes. The result was exactly one half of a DNA chain. One half of the recombinant that Fed's code had tried to calculate.

They sat quietly for a few moments, the plain-looking web page slowly spinning that half chain in blue and black pixels. Xing bowed and quietly excused himself to go to bed. Cessus laid himself out on the table behind where Fede stood next to Tonx. Nobody spoke. Outside, in the alley, rain began to patter against the giant Pokey ad covering the window.

The silence stretched out for a long time. After a while their screens blanked themselves automatically to save power, and darkness spilled through the room.

"What now?" asked Fed. Nobody answered. Tonx rose, walked to the window. The Pokey logo stood out against the lamplight from the alley below, circling his torso. He crossed his arms.

"I don't know" said Tonx. "I don't know."

In the end they'd slept on it. The next morning they gathered together in the upstairs room of Otaku, Xing and his fellows still asleep in their warrens throughout the city. They sipped green tea and salty soup and rubbed the dark rings around their eyes. The room was still, rain streaking the windows, a dim gray light creeping slowly over them.

Eventually Cessus broke the silence. "I'm going to comm Marcus" he said. Cables came together and the projector flickered to life. Marcus's dark face filled the far wall, bruised features resting peacefully against smooth white pillows.

"I'b here" he rumbled quietly, his deep voice rolling out of the speakers, filling the room.

Tonx coughed, examining his fingers as he laid them flat against the table. Everyone watched, waiting.

"We're leaving" he said.

"What?" asked Cass.

"We're going home" said Tonx. "It's time to call this thing off."

He looked around at them. "Sometimes you have to know when to give it up. All we've got is a drive with who-knows what on it and half our data. Chow holds all the cards, Marcus is in the hospital, and we're out of options. It's gotten too dangerous. We're going home."

"We could bluff them" said Fede "tell them we've broken the encryption."

"And then what?" asked Tonx. "Go in with guns blazing? At some point we have to hand over the drive, and when we do we're out of leverage."

He shook his head. "It's too dangerous. I'm not risking your lives an further for my half-baked idea."

Tonx stood up and turned away, towards the stairs. "Pack it up. I'm going to order tickets. Marcus, I'll arrange for the proper documentation so you can get a hospital ride as soon as you're well enough. We're all under contract and I'll pay off expenses as I'm able."

Tonx took a step away from them, the boards creaking under his weight.

"Bullshit" said Fed. Everyone turned. Fed's lips were curled back, his eyes cast in shadow. "It's too late for that, Tonx. We've already risked our lives. We've already given up everything for 'your idea.'"

He stood up, the chair skittering backwards across the floor. His eyes shone as he stared across the long table. "I gave up a steady ride through school straight into a cubical for this, and I wouldn't trade anything for that. I'm here because I believe in this, I believe in us. I'm going to make it happen. If you want to go home, then go. But I'm staying here and finishing this."

Nobody spoke. The rain spit against the windowpane, a quiet, angry rattle.

"Cub geb mig" came Marcus's voice. Everyone turned towards the screen. Marcus's eyes were swollen almost shut, deep black lines tracing the metal plates in his skull where the excess voltage had burned the skin.

"Cub geb mig oudda here" he said again. "I'b wid Febe."

"Me too" echoed Cessus. "I'm with him."

"We all are" said Cass. "We all are."

"It's too dangerous" protested Tonx. "There's no way to do this without putting ourselves under serious threat. We're underpowered here, people, and if we keep pushing somebody's going to get killed."

"We know the risks" said Fed. He folded his arms. "But it's not your choice anymore, Tonx. You may have pulled this thing together, but we're all in it now."

Tonx stood at the head of the stairs and looked at his friends.

"It's okay, Tonx" said Cass. She pushed his chair back from the table with one long leg, pointed at it.

"Now sit down and start thinking of a way to get our data back."

In the end they'd confided in Xing. The professed Confucian hacker had listened carefully to everything they'd said and slowly steepled his fingers.

"Confucius was known for preaching right action and respecting authority. He did not say much about rebellion" he said.

"Sorry to make it hard on you" said Tonx.

"No, no" said Xing, a shy smile crossing his face. "There is a saying; 'The roots of education are bitter, but the flower is sweet.' It is good challenge. Besides"

His eyes closed and he smiled benevolently. "It will good to assrape Harry Chow."

Cass let out a burst of disbelieving laughter before she could stifle herself.

"Right" said Cessus, getting back to the subject. "So how do we deal with this? He's got the data and, we can assume, Poulpe. The half of the drive that's encrypted is still completely unknown to us - it may be trash for all we know. Although it's our guess that he's going against the wishes of his superiors we've got to assume he's still got government firepower available."

"A Chinese saying is, 'If the father is a rat, the son will only know how to dig holes'" said Xing. "Let us give Chow a hole, and let him dig."

"What do you mean?" asked Cessus.

"Chow expects treachery and lies. So, we should give him treachery. Otaku have been problem for Harry Chow for a long time now; he knows of us. He will not be surprised if I call him and offer to betray you."

Fede started in his seat. "What?" he said.

"He's talking about a feint" said Tonx. "We'll call Chow and tell him we've cracked the data on the drive and want to swap it for Poulpe and the recombinant. Once we're done negotiating Xing will call and suggest that the Otaku have been working with us and want to sell us out in exchange for privileges, like guaranteed government data lines. Am I right, Xing?"

"Yes yes" said Xing. "Exactly. Chow makes deals for favors all the time. He will not be surprised for us to sell you out."

"But how does that help us?" asked Fed. "We've still got to meet him and exchange the data."

"There's no way we can count on him actually bringing the data with him" said Tonx. "We've got to meet him and get some kind of lasting leverage. Otherwise he'll screw us and keep the data until he can figure out what it's for. He has no reason not to."

"Good point" said Xing. He sighed lightly and flexed his fingers against each other. "But Otaku are not fighters. We cannot compete for firepower with Chow."

He sighed again, staring intently at the blank tabletop before him. He looked up; "Mencius said, 'The benevolent has no enemy.' It is perhaps better to make this an opportunity for others."

"You lost me" said Tonx. "Who do you mean?"

Xing smiled shyly. "You are familiar with Triads?" he asked.

"They're the mafia in China, right?" said Tonx. He wasn't smiling.

"That is good explanation, although they are many centuries older than mafia" said Xing. "Otaku has a… relationship with the Triads. They are very interest in Harry Chow. Maybe they will help."

Cessus and Tonx shared a glance Fede didn't know how to interpret.

"What kind of relationship?" Tonx asked.

Xing smiled.

Fede didn't know what the hell was going on. A full day after their meeting with Xing the whole Otaku tribe was swarming like bees. The room downstairs resembled a spinning class, sweating Chinese boys pulling on masks and taking their turns on an extra bank of bikes, generating power from thin pale muscles. A near-constant stream of them flowed in and out of the back doors and hallways, the alley door occasionally sliding open to admit a new cadre. Nobody made eye contact and all the boys spoke in stuttering hushed tones. The whir of the bikes and the click of chords was pervasive, an orchestra of plastic crickets. They'd given Fede a mask to use so he could plug in, but he didn't like not being able to see what was going on around him. He preferred his goggles anyway.

So he sat in one row of seats, his cable trailing upwards and away, surrounded by the stink of soy sauce and sweat and teenage testosterone, inundated by the sound of hacks being made.

The rest of the conversation with Xing had gone suddenly and steeply over his head. Tonx and Cessus and Xing had had a long talk about "relationships" and "assistance" and "interests," all of which seemed to Fede to mean that some people owed other people favors. But none of it was very clear. All he'd gotten out of it was that Otaku occasionally wrote code and ran data for a triad called Fuk Ching, and that Fuk Ching and a bunch of the other triads all reported to a sort of uber-triad called Big Circle.

Tonx had tried to explain it to him later, after Xing had gone off to contact whoever it was he was going to contact.

"Think of Big Circle as angel investors" he'd said. "They act as arbitrators, right, because they've got their money in all the triads. It's in their interest to keep everyone from killing each other. The triads all benefit from Big Circle's money and influence, so they all keep members of Big Circle 'on staff.' They're kind of like members of a huge board of directors, except it's a crime syndicate."

"But what do they want with us?" asked Fed.

Tonx rubbed his eyes. "That's the hard part." he said.

"Fuk Ching, the triad Otaku does work for, has a big presence in New York. As a result of the business laws in the US a lot of the other triads use them for money laundering, fronts, and related business shit. So Fuk Ching has its fingers in a lot of pies."

"But what's that have to do with us?" said Fed.

"We fucked everything up" said Tonx. "They had this nice balance going, where all the triads had minimal data lines out of the country due to governmental controls. Otaku specialized in ways to get around those restrictions, with limited success, and Fuk Ching shopped them around."

"So?" asked Fed.

"So we launched your app and proved that the governmental controls could be circumvented. Worse, Chow picked up the app and used it for who knows what. If word gets out to the triads about this seriously bad shit will start to happen."

Fede scratched his head. "Like what?" he said. "Who cares if the triads find out? They can write their own damn software."

"Exactly" said Tonx. "Think, Feed. If the triads realize they can exploit the country's network to their own ends they suddenly have a way to create an enormous advantage over the other triads. The Chinese network will be overloaded with viruses. There would be a major power struggle based on accessibility and network share dominance."

"And the average Chinese guy wouldn't be able to do shit" said Fed, realization slowly dawning.

"He'd be lucky if he could get his email" said Tonx. "Xing wants to empower the average Joe here. He wants to blow the lid off the network restrictions to implement free market capitalism under imperialistic socialism. But he knows they can't do that by simply toppling the existing regime."

"So instead he wants to get Big Circle to do it?" asked Fed.

"No, instead he wants Big Circle to negotiate with Chow on Fuk Ching's, and subsequently Otaku's, behalf. Chow's gone out on a limb to try and do something with our code - we don't know what. Xing is betting that Big Circle can threaten him into turning over our results and maybe make some slow, long-term changes towards opening up the networks a little."

"They want to make a controlled shift" said Fed.

"Right" said Tonx. "It's a political play, but if it works we get our data and get sent back to the U.S., and the triads get a little more in bed with the government, and the Chinese networks slowly loosen up a little."

"And nobody knows how we did what we did" said Fed.

"Not necessarily" said Tonx. "Depending on how things play out we Chow may want to spin it as a successful attack he countered. Who knows. Right now that's pretty much the least of our worries."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning we're way the fuck in over our heads, Feed. The triads aren't small players. They own most of Asia, and they're run by Big Circle. The only reason I can see for them not just shooting us and dumping us in the river is that Otaku's completely fucking in love with Cessus."

"They're what?" asked Fed.

"He showed them some sort of weird biofeedback programming training app and now they think he's the next Bodhisattva or something. They're all hyped on training under him." Tonx paused, narrowing his eyes as he peered at Fed. "And they think you're a prime example of this shit because you wrote the virus."

"It's good code" shrugged Fed, his eyes flickering down to the chord in his hand. "So does that mean they'll protect us?"

"It means we have a better chance of not ending up dead. But not a great one. We're going to have to act as the bait to get Chow to come out. Big Circle's not willing to risk a direct confrontation, so it's up to us and Fuk Ching to get a hold of him and arrange an 'incidental meeting.' Fuk Ching's not exactly delighted to have some outsiders forcing their hand, either. So it's not a stellar situation, no."

"Wait a minute" said Fed. "Xing knew about the virus from when Cessus and I first got here. Why didn't he contact Big Circle earlier?"

"He did" said Tonx. "They were just waiting to see if our app really worked. Instead we proved that Chow was abusing the Chinese network with it and that he probably has our data somewhere."

"Xing what?"

"Xing's been in touch with Big Circle the whole time. They've just been waiting and watching. I told you Feed, we're in way over our heads. Now come on, Cessus wants to show off his prime student. And you'd better make it impressive."