Opposition Shift Read online

  It came equipped with jacks and higher tech equipment as well, offering an opportunity for amateur slingers to try their luck in the datascape. He could see a few seated at the row of terminals and displays tucked toward the back of the shop. Several were simply doing mundane things, checking email, watching vids, but he saw at least two pounding away at something in CodeSource.

  The old man had said it was a black site, so all the available access was going to be ghosted. Part of the guarantee of prime service by the house meant there was no telling what sort of slicing and other black-market deeds were being conducted beneath the homespun facade of the place.

  Hayden made his way to the counter at the front of the shop and had to clear his throat with obnoxious loudness before the manager paid him any heed.

  The man wore a green knit cap despite the heat common in the city and held a burning cigarette between two fingers. For a moment, Hayden couldn’t figure out exactly why the man was staring at him so skeptically. He followed the man’s gaze downward and winced at the blood still staining the knees of his pants. It should have been on his hands as well, but they had been cleaned up a bit while he was out, although he could still see bits of red caught beneath his fingernails. He tried for a smile, but he imagined it didn’t have the effect he hoped for. The manager still looked nervous as Hayden explained that he needed to jack in.

  The price was more than he was expecting, probably a ridiculous luxury for the locals. He was relieved to see that it was only the use of CodeSource that was jacked up so high. He was also relieved to find his wallet was still buried deep in his pocket when he went digging. They had taken his gun but left his money, that was interesting.

  He paid in cash, worried that Americana may have put a stop on his cards when he went missing and not willing to risk the trouble of trying one, not that any black site would have been willing to deal in digital credits anyway.

  The manager, as he warily handed Hayden his change, seemed to be looking for an excuse to boot him out. Some business came with a cost and clearly, the manager could smell the trouble positively radiating off Hayden. He couldn't blame the guy. Hayden was clearly an outsider and his short hair didn’t hide the double-set of jacks that marked him as a MassNet capable slinger. This was a place for up and comers and small-timers, not the kind of high-risk players that Hayden knew he couldn't pretend not to be.

  He bought a cup of coffee while he was at it. The stuff brewing in the pot smelled good, and it had really been a day. he was shocked he hadn’t woken up with a headache from the lack of caffeine. He laid down a tip worth as much as he'd paid for the CodeSource access and loaner rig, and that seemed to make the manager ease up a bit.

  Hayden sat down at the terminal furthest from the other patrons and sipped at the steaming cup as he waited for the older model rig to boot up. Still paranoid that his jacks were fried and would malfunction despite their high quality, he meticulously cleaned the port cable before he plugged it in.

  He looked behind him once more as he sank into CodeSource, not quite at ease with the thought of leaving himself wholly vulnerable while he was out of commission. The place had a few tough-looking bravos who were no doubt security, but he didn't think they'd have much of a chance against the sort of trouble that was likely to come gunning for him. It wasn’t like he had much choice though, he amended, as the café faded from his sight.

  His time in CodeSource was quick, his task being simple. He stayed in just long enough to contact HQ and arrange for an extraction. Emotions weren’t tangible through code, so he had no gauge on the reaction of the slinger he spoke to, one of several who had drawn the unfortunate task of working in the operations center late into the night. Their defensive grid could not be left unattended, not after what had happened at the previous HQ, and without Hayden around he was sure that there had been a few folks pushed to the brink of collapse by Overdog. Hayden only received the slinger’s affirmative that he would notify Overdog and Captain Mitchell and that he could expect an extraction at his current location within the hour.

  Normally, he would have stayed in longer, checked to see if there was anything worth seeing in the code around him, looked closer at the work of the freelancers and kids slinging around him.

  However improved the wound in his chest felt, he was still healing, and even this small task had left him feeling drained. Hayden powered down CodeSource slowly, knowing that the jolt of exiting too quickly would only make him feel worse.

  He leaned back in the cheap plastic chair he’d chosen, surveyed the space within the café for points of entry. He was sure there was a backdoor behind the counter, behind the curtain separating the public space from the private. It was the sort of thing Laine or Mitchell would have occupied their spare time with.

  He let his head tip back into the wall behind him and went over the old man’s words. It would be helpful, he imagined, if he could arrange them in a way that made sense before he relayed them to whoever his interrogator happened to be and he had no doubt there would be an interrogation. They'd call it a debriefing, but he knew better, the stakes were too high for anything less.

  When rescue finally came, two of Mitchell’s operatives, neither of them with names Hayden could remember, he was just relieved that they used the front door.

  Hayden swallowed his anxiety and got up to meet the light-haired man who stood in the doorway. He looked Hayden up and down but said nothing as he stepped aside, allowing Hayden to leave and join his partner outside.

  An armored car that looked to be the same one he had taken to the fish market the previous day stood at the curb, but really, the corporation only used a handful of various models. It was likely a different, if identical car.

  Part of him had hoped for Laine to show up and fetch him back, she knew him, at least, and would probably have pasted on her usual creepy attempt at a smile. For once, he might have been glad to see the familiar expression butchered on her apathetic face. Or she might have shot him right away, if she thought he was compromised, never could tell with her.

  He felt more caged than safe as the operatives gestured him into the darkened backseat. Something in the old man's story tugged at his chest, suddenly making him feel as if he was an outsider looking in.

  Had they done something to him? Was he being sent back to cause more chaos by being alive than dead?

  They passed several more bicycle cabs on their way back to HQ, and though Hayden looked closely, none of them appeared to hold old men behind their windows.

  Chapter 3

  His head ached more than his chest and that was saying something. Hayden had been seen by the medical staff as soon as they’d returned from his extraction, their first priority being, of course, that he didn’t keel over in the midst of his forthcoming interrogation.

  The examination of his battered body revealed that the lingering effects of the firefight were minimal, other than his overall dehydration. The impact of the round in his chest would leave an ugly bruise that, the medical staffer informed him coolly, went deep enough that he would feel it in his bones for a while.

  They’d expected internal bleeding or cracked bones beneath the bruising and were shocked to find neither, just a small hairline fracture in a single rib, telling Hayden simply that he was lucky his single layer of armor had functioned so well under fire. He didn’t have the energy to offer the full explanation and wasn’t looking forward to the reprimand he would receive if they knew he’d “inappropriately deployed” his armor on a civilian.

  He didn’t mention the unknown medication given to him by the old man either, dreading just as badly the battery of tests that would ensue if he did, the last thing he needed now was a drug flag attached to his name in the corporate personnel database.

  There was a sting in the back of his neck as the tracker and his stalled-out HUD that lay just below the jacks for CodeSource and MassNet were brought back to life. The augments staffer commented on the oddness of the malfunction and was relieved when hi
s multitude of tiny electrodes and micro-manipulators brought it back online.

  Hayden knew that he'd be required to submit the device for a full diagnostic when he got back to New Los Angeles and if the company wanted to be mean about it they'd raise his insurance premiums. They always had some kind of leverage, didn't they?

  He half expected the Laine to be there in medical with him, bursting through while they worked, ready with a thousand questions that couldn't possibly wait until he was finished getting patched up. He was hoping for the questions to come from her rather than someone else when it was interrogation time; he doubted her voice would have the same suspicious, accusatory tone that others might take on.

  As it was, Bascilica wanted to debrief Hayden himself, having taken a private jet and then clandestine armored transport here to the new island HQ. It was an expensive trip, and considering how powerful the man was, Hayden had no doubt this was just as much about showing his fellow executives and investors that he was willing to get his own hands dirty as it was about getting information. The slinger realized this high profile and expensive debriefing was a bit of theater for the sake of Bascilica's peers.

  “You didn’t ask him anything else?”

  Bascilica had asked variations of this question at least three previous times throughout the debriefing and Hayden had yet to come up with an answer that seemed to satisfy the man. As he answered this time, he was already expecting Bascilica to come up with another version the second Hayden stopped talking.

  “He was back in the cab nearly as soon as he dropped me at the door. Even if I had thought of something worth asking, I wouldn’t have had time. He made it clear that we were done, following him wasn't really an option, sir.”

  Hayden wanted to make excuses, to say he was in shock and therefore not to be expected to think rationally of the sort of questions that would lend HQ the most valuable intelligence. He wanted to tell Bascilica to go fuck himself—he came back, didn’t he? He was telling them what he could remember as best he could. Wasn’t that enough?

  With the miniscule amount they knew about the Akiaten in the first place, Hayden’s knowledge could be the breakthrough they needed, could move their stalled progress forward at long last. The slinger had been getting his ass kicked ever since setting foot on this island, and he was starting to feel desperate for a win, any win, that could restore his ego to its full measure.

  At last, however much it rankled the boss, Bascilica seemed to have accepted that Hayden was not as versed in the art of interrogation as another agent might have been and had thus, done a poor job of drawing more information from the old man than he’d been willing to give.

  Bascilica was interested in Una as well, and the slinger didn't miss how the executive carefully mixed her into the question and re-question process, attempting to mask the depth of his interest. Hayden had thought seriously about not mentioning her at all, but that seemed just as bad as mentioning her. It would look twice as suspicious, he reasoned, if he neglected to speak of her role now and then slipped up later. He had to look out for himself too, and since he was in the hot seat, the slinger had to make a choice. Better to avoid flags and suspicion than to give the Union any reason to doubt his mission readiness or his allegiance.

  A nagging sense of guilt had been building in his gut since he began the interview, but it grew still worse when he mentioned the woman whose life he had saved (and who had saved his in turn). It was easy to keep the information he gave regarding her vague, having not had the same relatively coherent conversation with her that he had shared with the old man.

  Much of his memory of her was obscured by the blur of the drug he’d been given, and for the rest, she’d been unconscious and bleeding. There wasn’t much to tell really, though he resented the look on Bascilica’s face that suggested he’d only exhausted his med-kit on the woman because of her looks.

  Perhaps that was the safer assumption for him to make. It was better for them to think Hayden had broken protocol because of a pretty face than from any sense of guilt or wavering loyalty. It was so perfectly in character for him that Hayden almost convinced himself it was true.

  Almost.

  “Could you tell me about the room you woke up in?”

  Another recycled question as though his boss thought his answer would change. That may have been the point, he realized, to catch him in a lie. He noted how careful Bascilica was to phrase it as a question; Hayden wondered who would step in to play bad cop, and imagined Laine sweeping through the door and cracking her knuckles. They were the best of friends, but Hayden did not harbor any illusions about where her loyalties lay. He recited much the same answer as he had last time, throwing in a sarcastic remark about the state of the room's peeling wallpaper that Bascilica didn’t seem to recognize as sarcasm.

  Bascilica nodded several times in quick succession, head bobbing. He tapped his temple, indicating that the conversation had indeed been recorded as if Hayden didn't know that pretty much everything in the Union was recorded. On clandestine missions like this, he wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some minimum wage analyst watching him sleep through a data feed in HQ.

  “This should come in handy, Cole. I am sorry for your ordeal and the Union is glad to have you back safe,” Bascilica said with false warmth.

  Considering how things had gone, in retrospect, Hayden wished that it was Captain Mitchell who had conducted the debriefing. Though the disappointment in Hayden’s screw-up may have actually stung coming from someone he respected, at least he wouldn’t have to deal with Bascilica’s oily smiles and choreographed handshakes.

  In person, Bascilica always irritated him more than the hologram he had grown used to seeing on their more remote missions. Perhaps because he knew, however angry he might be, he couldn’t strike a hologram. His boss was a celebrity power player in the gladiator arena that was the network of Union Americana boardrooms and trading floors.

  Face to face was a potent reminder of the man's plastic charisma and Hayden's own intense dislike of the man. The temptation to bash his fist into the face of the man grasping his hand was nearly too much, but Hayden managed to survive the prolonged handshake and even the scripted goodbye-and-thank-you-for-your-time that followed. Shut the fuck up and get paid Cole, the slinger said to himself, reciting one of the more caustic mantras of the street slingers he'd cut his teeth alongside.

  The door had not quite closed behind him when Bascilica’s voice found his ear, trailing through the crack between the study wood and the wall.

  “Oh, and Cole, obviously, we aren't paying you to soak up the local culture or work on your tan.”

  Bascilica’s voice went hard. “Find the pulse Cole, don't get lost in regional squabbles or slinger feuds. Everything is riding on this. Let the others fight over territory and control, once we have the pulse everything else will follow and fall into place. I’ve already sent Nibiru a number of new specifics, so, as soon as you are able.”

  Patience worn thin, Hayden barely managed an affirmative before he let the door close between them.

  As soon as he was able, Bascilica had said, implying that Hayden had free reign to determine when he was up to getting back to work, but making it clear that it needed to be damn soon. While his private quarters at this HQ were not nearly so nice as the last, they still held a relatively comfortable bed that he was itching to crawl into.

  It may have been the awful couch he’d been lying on or simply the stress of the past few days, but his back was in knots and there was tension in his shoulders that wouldn’t ebb no matter how he tilted his head or angled his spine.

  He was nearly to the stairwell—an elevator was just one more luxury they’d given up during the move. He was shocked no one had commissioned for one to be built, but with the temporary nature of the building they were currently operating from, it just wasn’t built to hold one.

  Yeah, he was definitely hurting and out of patience, thought Hayden, if he was finding things to complain about in a per
fectly functional HQ. Maybe he'd gotten soft after so many high-end jobs. A little rugged time in the bush was rattling his precious comfort.

  Come on slinger harden up already.

  His foot had just topped the first step when his HUD received a new message.

  He sighed. But important messages were often relayed that way and it wouldn’t surprise him if the content were time sensitive. It only took him a second to check it.

  Nibiru was asking for him, requesting his presence in her workshop.

  He debated whether to bother with the walk upstairs at all, but all his equipment was there, and in the end, he dragged himself up the stairs to his room and retrieved his rig before heading back down. He looked longingly at the bed, his eyes drawn to his bottle of balance pills. He longed for some equilibrium, yet stopped himself just before his hand closed around the bottle. The slinger took a deep breath and turned away, his hand empty.

  The door was closed for the first time since they’d worked together and for a moment, he hesitated in front of it, trying to focus on sounds coming from inside. He was sure she wouldn’t have asked for him if he’d be interrupting anything. He settled for knocking, which made the distant click of fingers on a keyboard grind to a halt.

  “It isn’t locked,” Nibiru said, her voice barely making it through the door.

  Hayden turned the knob, pushed it open, and stepped inside.

  She sat in the desk chair a good yard away from the desk itself, her booted feet balanced on its surface and her computer closed and wrong side up in her lap. She wasn’t jacked in yet and looked to be toying with something in the circuits.

  She frowned when she let herself look up. “You fucking scared me, Cole. There was a betting ring going on about which body parts they would find intact.”

  Hayden held up both hands and waggled his fingers. “As far as I can tell, it’s all here,” he said. "Which part did you bet on?"