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New Eridu. Midtown, near the dockyards.
A dingy no-name bar on Sente Street, festooned with tacky tropical-themed decor.
Late morning. Sun glaring through the windows.
Two of the screens above the bar were blasting some indoor hockey game. The other three were the lifeless blue of a television set, tuned to a dead channel: doubtless because the screens in question were television sets tuned to dead channels.
Palló strode into the bar, two goons in front of him and another half dozen behind him. (There were many more hidden up and down Sente Street, but keep your cards close to your chest, right?) They all wore the uniform of the Superjets gang: silvery pleather jackets, shades either on or tucked into the neckline of their shirts.
The contractor was easy to spot. Bubblegum pink hair, jeans more shredded than a used Kevlar vest... and garish nail polish, never forget the garish nail polish. Nicole Demara was lounging in an armchair at a table just in front of the bar. In one hand she had a virgin mojito—Street Kid Rule #8: Don’t drink on the job, that’s how they get your guard down—and in the other, she clutched the handle of a black briefcase that nobody had ever seen her without.
A second briefcase sat on the table in front of her, shiny and steel. This was the one that got Pallo’s attention.
He took the seat opposite Demara. “You got the prototype cores?” he said.
Demara nodded, looking proud. “Every last one of them. And not a single one of them was broken, I checked myself.”
“Good—”
“Honestly, we deserve a bonus for how pristine these things are! Don’t you think?”
Palló waved to one of his subordinates, who took the steel case from the table. He regarded Demara, unimpressed, as the woman crossed her arms in what he could only describe as a strategic way.
“No bonuses, Demara,” he said. “You get paid the agreed amount. No more, no less.”
“Yeah, about that,” said Demara. “We’ve run three jobs for you in as many weeks. Good times. But I was balancing the books the other night, and do you know what I found?”
Palló could already feel a headache coming on. He shot the Raider a look. “What did you find?”
“You short-changed us, Palló. A few swapped digits here and there, and you put us out nearly forty thousand Dennies.”
“We did no such thing,” said Palló.
(In the corner of his eye, one of his men stiffened... wait, thought Palló: that was his bank transfers guy. Shit, had they stiffed Demara?)
“Yeah, see,” said Demara. “We’re not top tier mercs, we don’t charge an arm and a leg...”
The pink-haired woman stretched her arms and leant back in her seat.
“...but, word to the wise: don’t screw Gentle House on the payout.”
Nicole Demara:
the Face.
Nicole wasn’t worried. Or, well, Nicole was a bit worried: going by everyone’s faces, it looked like Palló’s deputy might have been embezzling from the gang. And that meant there was no way the Superjets would just be handing Nicole the money she was owed.
Plan B, then.
“Look, clearly this is news to you too.” Nicole reached into her briefcase and pulled out a few slips of paper, slid them across the table. “I went and did you a favour, highlighted all the transactions that are off. All you have to do is pay us the difference.”
Palló grabbed the sheets. “Look, maybe you’re onto something,” the Superjet boss said, disgruntled. “I’ll double check the accounts later. Let me get back to you in a couple days.”
“Uh, no, you’re paying us back now,” said Nicole.
“I’m really, really not,” said the gang leader.
“What am I supposed to tell my crew? That we’ve gotta make an appointment to get our paycheck? You’re out of your mind if you think I’m agreeing to that.”
“Uh, boss...?” said one of the Superjets.
“What?” said Palló.
“We’ve got cores missing. The case is mostly full of... energy drinks.”
Palló’s face grew dark.
“You robbing me, now, Demara?” he said, voice niiiice and level.
“Nah,” said Nicole, casually examining her nails. “I ran the numbers. This is the cores you asked for, minus all the back pay you owe us.” (Hmm, all good. Left middle finger was chipped because she’d handled the steel case wrong earlier, but no new blemishes at least.)
“Accounting error or not—”
Nicole threw her hands up, exasperated. “I’ve gotta keep the lights on, asshole!”
“—this is no way to do business. Where are the cores, Nicole?”
“In a safe place,” Nicole replied. “Fix the money issue and I’ll get it to you straight away.”
“Do you know who you’re dealing with here?”
“Someone who needs to clean house, by the looks of it,” Nicole replied, sipping her mocktail. “I’ll give you one last chance...”
“You, give me?” Palló said. He scoffed. “Miss Demara, you don’t seem to understand the gravity of—”
Bang.
An explosion rocked the bar, throwing everyone to the ground.
It was a concussive blast, throwing tables around, but only knocking a couple of fancy liqueurs from the shelves. A flashbang and a smoke grenade went off a split second later, making it impossible to see.
Nicole growled.
Oh, those idiots.
Compensation fees for the damage to the bar: ten thousand Dennies. Budgeted for.
But, thought Nicole, as she sprinted into the bathrooms and vaulted up the counter, she hadn’t finished negotiating.
“What gives, Kid!?” said Nicole, as she climbed out the bathroom window into the alley out back. She was covered in soot. “I said to wait for the signal!”
“What?” Billy Kid—cyborg, gunslinger—helped her down, blinking perplexedly. “But you gave the signal, Boss.”
“Not true,” said Anby, who was standing lookout. “The signal was ‘that was your last chance’. Nicole said ‘give you one last chance’. Those are entirely different phrases. Billy initiated plan C before plan B had run its course.”
“Those are not ‘entirely different phrases’...” Billy shook his head. “Ok, fine, my bad. But Boss, when this is over, we’re having a talk about code phrases.”
“Over here!” shouted someone. “The Hares are out back!”
The three shared a glance. As one, they blew the joint, weaving down the alleyway to their pre-planned escape path.
And, even as a throng of footsteps sounded from behind and in front of them, there it was: the stack of wooden crates that would let them jump the barbed wire fence on the quiet side of the alley.
Because of course Nicole had picked a meeting spot with a good exit route for Plan C. She was Nicole Demara, the Cunning in the Cunning Hares.
They’d picked this bar for the meet because of the exit route. There was a Hollow just a stone’s throw and a vaulted fence away, and wouldn’t you know it?: they’d vaulted the fence. Better yet, the Hollow bordered on both a decommissioned train tunnel and a city electrical maintenance corridor: too many exits for the Superjets to cover them all.
Nicole flipped her pager-phone open.
“Proxy,” she said into the phone. “You’re up.”
The pager-phone was a loaner from today’s Proxy, a clunky rigged-together piece of trash that was just barely able to pierce the entropy distortion around the hollow. Enough for some lo-fi audio, but that was all they ought to need.
They vaulted the fence using the crates they’d scoped out earlier, and a lovetap from the business end of Nicole’s briefcase smashed their staircase to pieces behind them.
The pager-phone crackled to life. “Ready and waiting,” said Iphis, their Proxy. “Once you’re in, keep moving, put the sun at your one’o’clock, and head straight for a bit.”
“On it,” said Nicole.
As one, the Cunning Hares linked arms and—ignoring the dismayed shouts of their pursuers—they plunged through the surface of the Hollow.
“How are they still on our tails!?” Nicole said, as they scrambled between upturned cars and the concrete shells of buildings. “Since when are they brave enough to follow someone into a Hollow?”
“They must really want those cores,” said Billy.
“Well they should have paid us in full, then!” Nicole snapped.
“They’re gaining on us,” said Anby.
“Not for long,” said Billy. “Watch my twelve.”
With that, he turned around, pistols in hand. Running backwards, he eyed their pursuers: five of them, about twenty metres out.
Easy enough.
First pair of bullets bounced off the walls near the Superjet thugs. The next pair hit one thug in the stomach and another in the leg, sending the latter falling. The next pair, one more to the downed guy’s leg and a missed headshot—lucky asshole dodged it—and ah shit they were firing back.
(Pity he hadn’t brought a cassette player with him. This was a perfect time for the Starlight Knights theme song.)
It took him another two seconds to empty both clips. Three thugs wounded or dead and the rest had dived behind cover. Good. That’d buy some time.
Billy Kid:
the Gunslinger.
“Fifty metres, then turn forty-five degrees left.”
“Through the carpark?” said Nicole.
“Yes.” Iphis’s ‘voice’ crackled over the comms. “Ethereals on the other side. Heads up.”
The Proxy’s text-to-speech had a lot more personality than off-the-shelf software—a baritone smoother than any jazz lounge saxophone, and a hint of an old-world English accent. Still, there were limits to any tech, and the flat inflection made it hard to tell where one sentence ended and the next began.
They made their way through the carpark, ducking a couple of potshots from their pursuers.
“Looks like all your prep work paid off, Nicole,” said Billy. “Everything’s going according to plan.”
“Don’t say that!” said Anby. “Never say that.”
“What’s so bad about—”
The pager-phone crackled again:
“Shit. Meatspace issue. Leaving you on auto-nav.”
All three Cunning Hares stared at the pager-phone.
(“Cause and effect,” muttered Anby.)
“Excuse me?” said Nicole. “We only need you for ten minutes, and you’re taking a freaking snack break?”
“Proceed forward three hundred metres. Ethereal activity detected ahead.”
“Answer me, you asshole.”
“Proceed forward two eighty metres. Ethereal activity detected ahead.”
Nicole growled. If Iphis thought he could pull this shit and get paid full price, the Proxy had one hell of a reality check coming.
Frigging hell. Of all the days, of all the half-hour timeslots the suits upstairs could have picked for their impromptu visit, they had to pick right frigging now.
Every second of this bullshit was money down the drain.
The contract with Gentle House had been extremely clear: any service below the negotiated tier would cost Iphis part of his revenue for the job. Depending how long this distraction took, Iphis could end up owing Nicole Demara money for this job. And that wasn’t a bill he cared to ignore.
(It’s well known on the Proxy Network: you can haggle with the Cunning Hares all you like, but don’t screw with them on the payout.)
The elevator doors opened.
From the elevator bank emerged seven—no, eight suits. Iphis recognised a few of them: Senior Vice-president of Technology, Senior Vice-president of Cyber, Junior Vice-president of Information Systems.
(Mister Ishida, the department manager, bowed; Iphis and his fellow grunts followed in kind.)
The rest were a mystery to him, though. One stood out: a skirt whose eyes were silvery, almost like mirrors. Contact lenses, maybe? But that sure as hell wasn’t the usual dress code for upstairs; most of the executives looked like carbon copies of each other.
The higher-ups conversed as the rank and file stood there, waiting. Iphis strained his ears to figure out what was going on. Something about... ah, this morning’s cyberattack. Veles Secure Storage mostly did physical lockboxes, but their data—say, key imprints and safe combinations—was just as attractive to hackers.
The problem here, of course, was that Iphis’s day job was preventing that kind of cyberattack. He had, that part wasn’t in question... but if upstairs had made their way over here into cubicle hell, that meant they’d be asking for his report at any moment.
Iphis glanced back at his screen. He only needed another ten minutes, not even that, to get Gentle House out of the Hollow, but...
...ah shit yep that was his desk Mister Ishida was walking the suits towards, now.
Ok, just had to finish this Proxy contract with his department manager and eight executives breathing down his neck. Shit.
“How did they get ahead of us?” groaned Nicole.
They were using an old truck for cover. Now and then, bullets dinged off the side, and Billy returned fire.
“Head straight for fifty metres, then turn left,” said the pager-phone.
Nicole hissed. “Yeah, we can’t head straight ahead. They got in front of us, you stupid computer!”
“Head straight for fifty metres...”
“Hollow geometry is weird. Maybe they got lucky?” Billy suggested.
“What?” said Nicole.
“You asked how they got ahead of us...”
“Rhetorical question, Billy,” Nicole snapped.
“Don’t move!” shouted a new voice.
Three Superjet lackeys rounded the truck, flanking the Hares from behind. Their guns were up and trained at the Cunning Hares, one ominous laser dot for each of them.
“Shit,” said Nicole, raising her hands, “um, don’t shoot, we’ll come quietly...”
“Damn right you will,” said one thug.
Nicole rolled her eyes. “No need to get sassy, though... hey, how much is Palló paying you, anyway? Feel like a little extra spending money?”
The goons exchanged glances.
This gesture took them about one third of a second: adequate time for Anby to launch forward and close the distance between them.
The nearest Superjet widened his eyes and trained the gun at Anby, but the tip of her blade had already slashed through his throat before he could complete the motion.
Throat: major arteries and oxygen supply, she remembered—remembered? Where did she no don’t think about before don’t think about before—a crunch as a knee shattered beneath her boot, letting her use the momentum to bounce off the human instinct is to raise the arms to shield the head no don’t think about before you’re here now your big sister’s got you okay?, don’t think about her blade traced a clean arc through the target’s ribcage, readjusted on the follow-through to slash open the femoral artery of the enemy hostile whose kneecap she had just—target?, enemy hostile?, take a deep grounding breath—
Anby was standing upright, her sword back in its sheath.
Elapsed time: one point nine five seconds, said nobody in particular, and the words echoed inside her skull, unspoken.
Anby Demara:
the Scalpel.
“Holy hell,” said Billy.
Nicole knelt, clutching Anby’s hands in her own.
“You there, Anby?” she said.
“I’m here,” Anby replied, her voice quiet but steady.
“Good.” Nicole glanced up. “Billy. See a way past them?”
“No chance,” said Billy. “There’s at least a half dozen of them entrenched there, all behind cover. We couldn’t get halfway to their position before we’re ripped to shreds.”
“Do not worry,” said Anby. “Statistically, large groups of undifferentiated shooters are easier to evade.”
Nicole stuck her head around the corner, then withdrew immediately. A quarter second later, bullets went flying from four separate directions through the space where her skull had just been.
“That’s definitely not true,” she told Anby. “That’s... really, really not true.”
“During the firearm engagements in Diamonds Die Faster, I observed...”
“Anby. That’s a Jane Bern film.” Billy pressed his face into his hands. “Nicole, she thinks gunfights work like Jane Bern films.”
“Everybody shut up,” said Nicole, pressing a hand over her earpiece. She spoke into her mic: “Iphis, path ahead is hostile. We need a fresh route.”
“Head straight for fifty metres, then—”
“If you don’t get back from your freaking coffee break this instant I will end you, Proxy.”
I will <emph>end</emph> you, Proxy.
Nicole’s threat didn’t display directly on Iphis’s monitor bank, he wasn’t a goddamned amateur. Instead, the fragments of text were sliced up, transcoded beyond casual recognition, hidden in the slow blinking of cursors and metrics in a dozen terminal windows.
“The hackers used employee credentials from the uptown branch,” Iphis said aloud, to his audience. “The unusual activity was flagged within thirty seconds. I had a protocol set up to insulate that kind of activity for triage—a kind of honeypot variant—”
Mister Ishida snapped something about sparing the important executives the details. (The balding man pronounced the name on Iphis’s employee badge like an epithet.)
“A honeypot?” said one of the upstairs suits. The lady with the gelled hair and silver eyes.
“Yes, Sir,” Iphis said, bowing his head.
“[Iphis], this is the Chief Digital Officer,” said Ishida. He might have also said a name, but Iphis didn’t hear anything after the title.
C-suite? Since when did Veles Secure Storage have a CDO?
“Honeypot: a kind of lure or ambush,” the silver-eyed woman said, probably for the benefit of the other suits. “And... what did you see them doing?”
Iphis spared six keystrokes to his Proxy management system, telling the autonav to reroute around whatever the hell Gentle House had run into.
About time, came Nicole’s reply, fragmented once again into a dozen pieces across a dozen terminal windows.
The executive with the silver eyes bothered him. C-suite? He’d never heard of her. And was that a leather choker she’s wearing? Here, at Veles Secure Storage HQ?, the corp with a dress code stricter than a UDP-5 handshake? Chief Digital Officer? Either she was a nepotism hire or she was very frigging competent, and from the sharpness of her gaze over Iphis’s shoulder, he wasn’t gonna bet on the former.
“They wanted vault security codes, were attempting to access data those credentials would never be cleared for,” said Iphis.
“Amateurish,” said the CDO. “Tell us, Miss...”
When Iphis didn’t reply, Ishida jumped in with the name on Iphis’s badge.
“Miss [Iphis],” the CDO said. “I see you’ve been running forensics on the packets.” She nodded to one of Iphis’s upper screens, which, shit, almost certainly meant she had spent time behind a keyboard herself. “What can you tell us about these hackers?”
Iphis suppressed a grimace. There was no way he could finish the job under this scrutiny.
Thankfully, Iphis had a contingency in place for situations exactly like this. A fellow Proxy, on retainer, able to switch in at a moment’s notice.
This was going to cost him a fortune, but Iphis was a Proxy. Proxies didn’t leave their agents in the lurch.
Three long-press keystrokes, disguised as entering a filter query into a window, and... a seemingly dead pixel on his screen changed colour.
It was done.
Emergency handover initiated.
Anyway. The day job.
Clearing his throat, Iphis said to the suits, “I’ve narrowed the location of the attackers to somewhere on Twenty-third Street...”
A TV in the back corner of Random Play unmuted itself. Music blared: some old John Wayne film, the orchestral score scratchy from dozens of replays.
“Dammit!”
Belle fumbled through a drawer full of remotes, and found the one to switch the TV back to mute.
She gave the customer an apologetic smile.
“Sorry, the wiring’s been playing up... Anyway, where were we?... Aha, three-for-two rental deal, that’ll be a tenner.” She leaned over the counter while the customer counted up coins. “Hey, Wise! How’s the electrician doing back there?”
Wise’s head poked out from the back room. “He said he needs both of us.” He vanished again.
(Phaethon Fact #1: there was no electrician. Obviously. The siblings did their own wiring.)
“Be right there! Okay, and... you don’t need a receipt do you, ma’am?”
Close the door behind the customer, check. Locked, check. ‘Back in fifteen minutes’ sign, check.
“All clear,” Belle said, striding into the backroom. “Fill me in.”
“Phaethon”:
The Proxy (capital ‘T’).
“Emergency retainer,” said Wise, leaning over the computer bank. “Iphis tagged us in. Client’s in a Hollow, Dockyards 53.” A small one that had appeared last month. They’d mapped the second-order topology nicely.
Belle joined her brother at the monitors.
“Extraction job?” she said, scanning the screens.
Wise nodded. “Yep. Possible interference. Iphis sent through two exit vectors.” Honour system: they’d use just the one, leave the other to Iphis for a rainy day.
“Client details?” she said.
“Party of three, properly equipped... oh, I know that public key, it’s Gentle House. Nicole Demara.”
“The Cunning Hares? They never returned our messages.”
“They are a little on the cheap side.”
“True. Well, Iphis is paying us. nothing like a free trial to get in Demara’s good books.”
“You’ve got that right, Belle. Time to do some...”
“Networking,” the siblings said simultaneously.
They kept their finger guns and cheesy grins pointed at one another until the H.D.D. beeped.
“The Bangaboo’s inside,” Belle said. “And...”
Wise whistled. “That’s a lot of life signs for such a small Hollow.”
“Are you jacking in, or am I?”
“Whose turn is it?”
“If I knew I wouldn’t be asking.”
“...heads or tails?”
“Emergency Proxy tag-in... Hold your position... Emergency Proxy tag-in...”
“I’m gonna gut you,” Nicole told the pager-phone. “I’m gonna figure out who you are and I’m gonna turn you into meat sushi, you hear me?”
“Hold your position...”
Anby raised a hand. “Nicole? Someone’s coming.”
“Superjets someone?”
Billy angled the shard of glass he’d been using as a mirror. “Uh... looks like a Bangboo. Old model. Need me to take it out?”
“Wait! Don’t shoot!”
The voice was coming from the Bangboo.
“...I guess don’t shoot?” said Nicole.
The Bangboo rounded the corner. Its head swivelled to look at them all, then settled on Nicole.
“Are you Nicole Demara?” it said. “Of Gentle House?”
“A sentient Bangboo,” said Anby, eyeing the robot suspiciously. “They’re potentially friendly help, but we should be aware of the possibility this is a rogue Artificial Intelligence threatening humanity...”
Nicole stepped towards the Bangboo, wrinkling her nose as she drew near. “Oof. It smells like rotten fruit.”
“Voice print confirmed. Good morning, Nicole Demara. My apologies, this Bangboo was in a dumpster five minutes ago. It was my closest spare to your location.”
“Why were you in a dumpster?” said Billy, scratching his hair.
“It’s clearly being remotely piloted,” said Nicole. “So, mysterious hacker. You with Iphis?”
“Iphis is indisposed. I am your replacement Proxy. Call me Phaethon.”
Billy and Abby dipped their heads. “Nice to meet you—”
“Wait, wait, wait. Phaethon?” said Nicole. “As in the Pink Hollow job, that Phaethon? Most expensive Proxy in town?”
The Bangboo’s eyes swivelled to her. “I’m not that expensive—”
“So what, we’re in a pinch, you’re going to make us pay through the nose because we’re desperate?” Nicole crossed her arms. “Fine. We might not have any choice, but listen carefully, Proxy: if you screw the Hares over you’ll—”
“You won’t pay a Denny.”
“—have a rep so bad you won’t be able to...” Nicole blinked. “Wait. What?”
“Iphis is footing the full bill for this emergency call-out.”
“He... huh. That son of a bitch is actually looking out for us?” That probably meant Iphis was losing money on this job, for that matter, Nicole realised. “Why...?”
“Why wouldn’t he? Iphis was your Proxy. That’s what we do.”
“Hmm,” grunted Nicole.
“Alright, then. I found a path that should lead past your pursuers. Follow me.”
The Bangboo took off at a brisk pace, and after a moment of hesitation, Gentle House followed.