The Deep Link (The Ascendancy Trilogy Book 1) (18 page)

On his fifth run, Bray no longer scorns the tediousness of
his task. They've all got to do their part, after all.

He navigates the streets carefully, making sure there are
no danger zones or surveillance spots he can't trick. His synet overlays
traffic signs, street names and house numbers over the visual input from his
eyes, and even gives him the images from various traffic cameras in small
patches that dance along the top of his vision. He walks with his hands tucked
deep in the pockets of his overall, a cap shading his eyes.

It's late afternoon in Erano's thirty-one hour day, and
the second work shift has already retreated into their homes and weekday
housings. The crowd is getting thinner on the streets, so he doesn't have much
time left to reach his target unobserved.

The four Syndicate sleepers he's contacted so far proved
to be a disappointment. One was eight years short of retiring—an engineer who
didn't want to risk his pension. The next was a mother of five, pregnant with
twins. Bray almost laughed in her face as she opened the door, but the dark
rings under her eyes held him back. She said she would do her best to provide
them with information, but that's all. The other two guys were fairly eager to
be part of any radical activity that promised to score off the TMC. James
Ratrand and Helmut Krupke. Bray doesn't like them, especially not Helmut. The
guy's got a funny glint in his eyes that screams trigger happy. But Bray hasn't
come out here to judge them. All he has to do is bring them in.

The dome's halo makes all the colors look off. The
concrete on the streets and sidewalks is washed in an oily-yellow hue, the
lamps hovering above the street glinting like disco balls, and all the building
fronts are a tad too violet.

Bray turns a corner and crosses a river over a fortified
bridge. The permafrost-covered acidic river, the
Fiume Giallo
, flows
into the
Mare Ocra
, the Yellow Sea, further south in D5. It forms a
small delta there, enriching the rigid soil with various valuable minerals. The
poisonous river cools the air down to negative degrees Celsius along its
shores. Bray shivers and hugs his arms to his chest as he crosses the bridge.

The buildings along this street are mostly info-tech
development facilities and data analysis centers, completely covered in opaque
panels and riddled with surveillance cameras. Bray even sees a couple of
observation bots fly overhead like fist-sized bumblebees. He pulls his cap
lower and hunches his shoulders, kicking imaginary pebbles as he approaches his
target.

A cargo transport rolls soundlessly over the concrete on
twenty large, foam-filled tires. It stops further up the street and begins a
laborious parking maneuver up the ramp of a storage building. Bray squints up
at a nearby surveillance tower with its round observation deck, its own
antennae array and a good dozen slots for the observation bots to come back to
and recharge. He approaches the intersection and turns right, checking the
marks on his virtual map once again.

This is it, his number five. Tactically ideal location for
a sleeper. Preston did say he had good connections on Erano.

Bray stops in front of a high-security door, watched
closely by two surveillance bots attached farther up the wall. Preston's code
sets the door's security array beeping lazily three times, and then the door
opens into a large, brightly lit hallway.

"Hello?" Bray asks, scrutinizing the entrance.

There's no sound beyond the rustle of the air conditioning
system.

Bray enters cautiously. There are two doors far in the
back. The door falls shut behind him with a heavy clunk. He winces.

"I've been expecting you," a metallic voice
comes from a speaker on the wall to his left.

How very dramatic
. Bray glances at the small com
terminal out the corner of his eye, and returns his focus to the doors ahead.
"Mr. Nevala?" He takes a step forward. "Crispin Nevala?"

"Mr. Dakins," the speaker says. "I expected
you to be older. Please call me Cris."

"Hi Cris. I'm Bray."

"I know."

Bray sighs. A muffled chuckle comes from the speaker
beside him. His shoulders sag. "I assume you know why I'm here," he
says.

"Yes, Bray." The smugness is audible despite the
metallic tinge deforming his tone.

"You some kind of hacker?"

"You could say that."

The guy's starting to piss Bray off. "Look, Cris, I
haven't got time for games. Come out so we can share our data, then I'm out of
here."

"I'm afraid that's not going to be possible,
Bray."

"Which part?" Better not be a threat. He doesn't
have time for this shit.

"You'll find all the information you need in that com
terminal. Just connect your nacom. We'll swap data and all due pleasantries.
Then you can leave."

Bray glares warily at the small terminal. Pulls out a thin
wire from its side, and plugs it into his nacom. He uploads the lists Preston
gave him and generates an alphanumeric code-name for Crispin Nevala, which he
then codes into the report he's supposed to deliver to Preston. A data package
is standing by to download into his nacom, waiting for an OK code.

"What now?" Bray asks. "Preston didn't give
me any other code."

"It's ACDC."

Bray snorts. "Like the electric current?"

"The Alpha Centauri Data Core."

Bray frowns.

He enters the code and the package begins to download into
his nacom. It's far bigger than he expected. Two minutes later it's still
downloading. Bray leans against the wall and stares back at the two doors. This
is all too weird for his taste. Maybe the guy's not even here. Maybe he's not a
real person. Has Preston gotten desperate enough to use rogue AIs?

"What's with the secrecy?" Bray asks, more to
pass time than expecting an answer.

"Let's just say the less you know the better. Both
for your little rebel league and myself."

"Won't be easy working with a ghost."

"Oh, we won't work together. I just provide the bits
and bytes necessary to keep you guys on the right track."

Bray shrugs indifferently, knowing he's being watched.
He's a little envious, admittedly. He'd much rather stay in the shadows too,
hacking away into dataspheres like some genius than run stupid errands for
Preston.

The data finishes downloading and Bray disconnects from
the terminal.

"Thank you," the speaker says. "Have a good
evening, Bray."

The front door unlocks.

"Yeah, sayonara."

Bray steps out into Erano's off-color twilight. He pulls
his cap lower, shoves his hands back in his pockets, and starts home.

The truck has finished unloading and its ramp has
retracted. Bray squints at the distribution platform. No more movement. He
peers over his shoulder toward the bridge he passed earlier, but there's nothing.
He's alone out here.

A soft whir approaches overhead—an observation bot
following him. His synet registers an open ID inquiry and responds with the
fake ID Preston gave him. He keeps his gaze on the ground, and picks up the
pace.

The bot overtakes him, adapts its speed to fly beside him,
and starts scanning him. The radiation cone runs up and down Bray's body,
prickling through the nervewires in his left arm. It gives him a light buzz in
the back of his head.

"State your purpose in
Piazza Del Sapere
,"
the bot drones.

Bray grins at the hovering machine. Then bolts up the
street toward the second bridge, sprinting for the boulevard.

The bot bursts into an earsplitting alarm and strobe
lights, and gives chase.

Bray's heavy boots hammer on the concrete. He won't make
it into traffic before the bot catches up, so he dives into an alley between
two buildings. It's so narrow both his shoulders scrape along the walls. The
bot pursues him, alarm blaring, strobe washing him in unnatural white. His
vision flashes painfully each time he looks back.

He escapes into another street and heads for the next
passage, then out into the boulevard. There are people on the sidewalk, staring
at him as he slows down into a jog, constantly looking over his shoulder. The
bot hasn't followed him out here. The boulevard must be out of its territory.

Bray slows down into a walk, panting and sweating despite
the evening chill. He worries the sentinel operating the tower back in the
Piazza
managed to catch a glimpse of him. He checks the local datasphere for an arrest
warrant on his fake name, but nothing shows up. Maybe a trespass isn't enough
to warrant an arrest, but it sure gets him noticed.
Fuck
.

This is the worst job he's had in the past three years. If
Taryn hadn't fucked up the contact mission, he'd be out there in space right
now, free to do whatever he liked.

No, not really. He'd still be doing what Preston wants. He
owes the old bastard too much. He'd probably be dealing with those alien
freaks, too.

At least he doesn't have to play watchdog for that little
beast of a woman. He's by himself now. While she's doing fuck-knows-what with
Jade.
How fucking great is that
.

-

As the evening nears, Bray's no longer comfortable in his
mine-worker cover. What could he come up with if an actual sentinel stops him
for questioning? That he's out for a new job to better his career? He'd give
anything to just vanish into thin air and pop up at the other end of the
galaxy, somewhere without errands to run for old begrudging bastards, and where
crazy girls can't pollute his mind.

The few restaurants lining the boulevard aren't open yet.
Some of their lights have come on, but the doors are all locked, their status
lights still burning red. Bray checks his synet for alternatives. The city's
public datasphere takes the opportunity to flood his brain with thousands of
advertisements. He makes a mental note to ask Preston for a spam-filter
upgrade, and wonders how his synet would fare in the event of a cyber-attack.
The datasphere must be crawling with viruses and worms, and he's not had a full
firewall upgrade in three years. Bray quickly disconnects from the datasphere,
an imagined tingle crawling over his scalp.

Near the perpetually busy intersection, Bray finds a place
that's open even this late. An expensive cocktail bar named
Voluttà
.

The semi-transparent door chimes delicately as he enters.
He pretends not to look around like a newcomer, but can't help absorbing the
beauty of the place. The walls and floor are tiled with real granite, streaked
with various colors, perfectly polished. Most likely imported. A bar runs along
the right wall, shaped like some gigantic abstract banana, carved out of what
Bray refuses to believe is real, cream-colored marble. A dozen fancy coffee
tables sculpted in brass and actual wood cluster against the opposite wall,
occupied by eight people of various kinds, all sipping their real fruit
cocktails. Two of them are TMC lieutenants, talking to each other in hushed
voices, barely audible over the eerie instrumental background music.

The bartender wears a black suit and bow, a silk replica
judging by its sheen. He nods courteously at Bray, gaze appraising him in the
blink of an eye. Bray returns a quick smile and takes a seat as far away from
the Ticks as possible. Luckily, they pay him no mind.

The table has an embedded interactive menu shaped like a
pineapple. Bray pretends to consider his choice, while he glares at the prices
and wonders what world the ingredients must have been imported from to warrant
those sums. He eventually orders a Barking Spider with an extra shot of
blood-orange juice. He watches the bartender perform his little circus act as
he mixes the ingredients.

The price of the cocktail keeps spinning in his mind.
What
the hell, the doc can afford it
, Bray decides. After all, he deserves a
little treat since he's not getting any freakin' break.

While he waits for the bartender's grand finale, he scans
the room from the protective shadow of his cap. The lieutenants are whispering
energetically to each other, completely oblivious of their surroundings.
There's a lady with her preteen daughter, both wearing identical dresses and
ridiculous hats topped with exotic grasses, with holographic butterflies
fluttering around them. Maybe the upper class
dame
is waiting for her
partner to escape the late shift in one of the fancier labs. Do scientists
really earn that much? Maybe he should've stayed with Nugh and let him pay for
school, find him a job... Maybe he would've had a pretty little daughter, too.
If he'd found the right girl, and if Nugh wouldn't have raped him to death in
one of his drunken fits of passion. However, if he hadn't killed Nugh and
gotten picked up by Preston, he wouldn't have met...

He grunts and shakes his head. The bartender serves him a
colorful glass with a slice of blood orange lodged on its sugar-coated rim.
Bray glances up.

"Bon appettit!" The bartender smiles dryly, and
returns to the bar.

Bray carefully takes a sip. It tastes like crushed
rainbows and pulpy sunshine, tickling his tongue and making his mouth water in
delicious pain. He peers at the others sheepishly, as if he's doing something
forbidden. He takes another careful sip, savoring every drop that rolls over
his tongue. He lingers over every sip for as long as he can, delaying the inevitable
end of his enjoyment.

The data package he's downloaded from Cris almost makes
his wrist itch. What's the deal with that freak? Why didn't he show his face?
And why's the package so large? What's in it—databases, malware, weapon
schematics?

Bray stares at the sinful drink making the glass sweat
between his fingers, and plays a little more with the liquid temptation. He
rescues the slice of blood orange from the brim of the glass, and sucks at it
carefully.