Neural Wraith, page 20
Juliet and Rosa appeared at the doorway, as if summoned by magic.
Nick drummed his fingers against his thigh, then decided to start at the theorized beginning.
“If we go with the Archangels’ theory, one of the police execs wants Helena. He can’t or won’t order the military to seize her or Tartarus for some reason. He also doesn’t want to seize her during normal police proceedings. So he’s relying on a third-party,” Nick said. “But without the right cover, they can’t get in.”
Chloe nodded. “If they knocked out the neural network at any other time, we would have almost certainly intervened or caught them in the act.”
“So they needed a police raid as cover. They also wanted Tartarus empty, so no human personnel alerted you to the intrusion.” Nick suddenly paused. “Huh. I left the office pretty late that night. Nearly late enough to…”
If he had stayed a little later, could he have stopped all of this? Or would he have been the guy in the movie hitting the alarm right before he got shot by the villain in the opening sequence?
“Nick?” Chloe asked in a soft voice.
“Nevermind.” He shook his head. “Anyway, the raid wasn’t timed to match the office party. Why was that? Pretty much anybody in the chain of command could have made that call.”
“Objections were raised. The military had legal objections, as they still have legal filings that have not been altered with respect to former Neural Spike personnel.” Chloe paused. “I believe Rie is still sorting yours out with Kushiel.”
Well, shit. Maybe he wasn’t entirely free of the Sword of Damocles.
“And?” he asked.
“The Mark 1s raised operational objections. Namely that they needed time to prepare for the rise in criminal activity that would ensue after shutting down so many black companies.” Chloe grimaced.
A shiver ran down Nick’s spine as he realized what she meant. “Has that happened?”
She shrugged. “It is too early to make a quantitative measure, and the NLF’s involvement makes it even more difficult to assess. But other cities in Neo Westphalia are reporting a significant increase in violent crime and criminal arrests in only a few days. As this case is broader than Neural Spike, it is expected to be years before we can normalize them without additional steps.”
Nick didn’t like the sound of “additional steps.” He remembered the dark look in Hammond’s eyes when he recalled the riots.
The Archangels terrified people, but they represented “soft policing” relative to what had been used back then. Nick didn’t know if that made their neural intrusion better. But they fell a long step short of the military warbots that thundered around the Spires after dark.
He turned in his chair and faced Chloe head-on. “So shutting down a bunch of black companies causes crime to rise. Actual crime. That’s a conversation I wanted to have at one point. The definition of crime. Because black companies and criminal enterprises are two sides of the same coin to me. And Tartarus getting shut down out of the blue only proved it.”
Chloe let out a deep sigh, which was echoed by the other two Archangels. Nick tried not to react to the way the dolls copied each other.
Chloe emulated him, and the other Mark 3s emulated her. It was an amusing cycle.
“Those are the unofficial terms used in Neo Westphalia,” Chloe said. “The Oversight Task Force is analyzing them in-depth. We would deem that black companies stick to ‘socially accepted crime,’ as they meet social needs that will be met by the market, regardless. Neural mods, sex mods, doll mods, illicit substances, and the necessary business accoutrements.”
“Accoutrements like HEAP rounds,” Nick said drily.
Chloe smiled wryly, then continued. “What we don’t understand is why society prefers these things. Nor do we understand the reason for every decision made. But we do know that there is a close relationship. Black companies suck the air out from criminal enterprises. When one can have legal status, and all the wealth, then they will accept taxation and monitoring.”
“Especially when the alternative is getting blown apart by a few hundred super androids.”
“Indeed. But you understand my point, do you not?”
Nick nodded. “Lucas has said it before. Even without a physical threat, it’s why he stays above board. He came from next to nothing, even if he spends money like he was born with a dozen silver spoons in his mouth. I can imagine him in the Spires one day, but not if he was a criminal.”
“And it is that allure that we believe keeps things relatively under control. There is violence, but the black companies largely keep it in check. Criminals do not. But if there is no benefit to being a black company, then there will be more violence, more instability, and greater unrest.”
Until, eventually, there was another “Great Unrest?” Nick left that part unsaid.
But he understood the thinking of the Mark 3s. More than he had before, he realized that they were androids to be feared. They weren’t merely trying to keep order or do their jobs as police officers.
No, the Mark 3s were trying to understand the city holistically, so they could make decisions that would reduce crime in the future.
Hammond had said that the Mark 3s were replacing the rest of the Ciphers in the Bureau. Nick was pretty sure they were replacing the executive. No wonder the commissioner liked Rie so much.
Nick scratched his head. “Alright. That gives me something to mull over. But back to my original train of thought: the raid was on the wrong date. So they needed to move it ahead. They used the NLF for that, and staged bomb threats on the day of the raid. Travis used them as a distraction to weaken Tartarus’s security, and they also acted as a cover story to raid Tartarus and other companies in the first place.”
A weak story, as other black companies would know that Tartarus wasn’t involved in the explosives trade.
“Finally,” he continued, “the raid itself took Helena, shutdown the security dolls shortly before the neural network itself, and then wiped all evidence. The police steered clear due to prior instructions to avoid Tartarus. Later, the NLF then tried to retrieve data from the security dolls and Travis disappeared.”
Chloe nodded. “That is an accurate summary of all that has occurred.”
Good to know that he’d managed to follow everything. He’d been a detective for all of three days.
“Then we’re left with a bunch of questions: did the NLF conduct the raid?” he asked. “If not, was Travis part of the NLF or the third-party who took Helena? And why were the NLF so interested in the security dolls if they participated in the raid?”
“The Host has answers to all of those questions.”
“Concrete answers? Or ones based on assumptions?”
Chloe’s eyes narrowed. Before she could answer, there was a knock at the door. The only other person who had ever bothered to knock on Nick’s apartment door had been Hammond, but this knock was far too polite to be him.
Nick rose and reentered his main room. He checked the doorbell camera. Rie stood in front of his door, swaying back and forth with her hands behind her back and the front of one foot pressed against the heel of the other.
“The innocent look doesn’t work on you,” he said bluntly as he opened the door.
“Oh? The records I dug up from Lucas’s mainframe suggest otherwise.” She smiled coquettishly at him.
He scowled, then pulled her inside. The Mark 3s had already clustered along one side of the room, but Chloe busied herself preparing coffee.
Rie’s eyes shot to the takeaway coffee cups. “Oh. I didn’t bring a gift. I guess I’ll have to do.” Then she frowned. “Or maybe my gift has already been given. I thought your salary was too much, but this is a literal dump. How do you live here?”
“By sleeping, eating, showering—”
Rie shot him a sidelong look and he stopped.
“As I told the others, it’s hard to find places that don’t require neural implants. Gentrification waits for no man,” he said.
“I don’t believe gentrification is part of the definition of inevitability,” she chided while joining Chloe in the kitchen. “These buildings have been up for renewal for as long as ARMDs have been in the police department. I’m surprised they’re still habitable.”
Juliet chimed in, “The hot water is barely functional.”
“And there are deficiencies in the neural shielding around individual apartments,” Rosa said. “We do not believe this building is to code.”
Chloe rolled her eyes as she handed two cups of coffee to Rie. “Those defects have been assessed by the planning board, which is why the complex must be rebuilt. Eventually.”
“That’s the keyword.” Nick accepted his coffee from Rie, then slurped it loudly. “Eventually. Pretty sure the developer who owns this place has connections in Alcatraz. They own a lot of the nearby tenements.”
The eyes of the Mark 3s flashed, and they collectively nodded. “Cheap accommodation for cheap labor.”
Rie scowled. “Be that as it may, I believe you can afford better. You are not cheap labor. There are excellent apartments that can be fitted for your needs.”
He eyed her closely, then decided to change the topic. “You said you dug up records from Lumen?”
She blinked, then shrugged. “While you were connected to her, I used your authorization to—”
“Through the maintenance terminal?” he confirmed.
Rie nodded, and he sighed.
“Rie, I know it’s second nature for you and the other Archangels to just rifle through people’s brains and lives, but could you sometimes… not?” he suggested. “Some mainframes do have methods to detect that sort of intrusion as well.”
“I am aware, so I took measures to avoid detection,” she protested. “Given Lucas’s role in the investigation—”
“You looked up old records that related to the dolls I used during Neural Spike’s testing?” Nick raised an eyebrow.
She at least had the decency to blush. “That was of peripheral interest.”
“In this case, I looked for actual information that might be useful,” Nick said.
Rie nodded, then gestured toward his bedroom. It would be awfully crowded in there. At least he’d be heavily caffeinated if he needed to keep pace with four high-endurance android.
Taking a seat in his office chair, he faced Rie and Chloe, who had sat on his bed. Once again, Juliet and Rosa stood by the door.
“I noticed you looking,” Rie said. “Lucas maintains an unusually healthy separation of concerns between his companies. If his office mainframe didn’t—”
“You can call her Lumen, you know,” Nick interrupted. “That’s her name.”
Rie paused, and the other Archangels stared at her. For some reason, Nick detected significantly more heat in their gazes than usual.
Clearing her throat—or pretending to, as Nick was pretty sure androids didn’t need to—Rie tried to press on, “If she didn’t have a connection to the Cobalt Lily, his office would look entirely legitimate.”
“Rie, why won’t you use the names of other mainframes? You call Chloe by name. But you intentionally avoid Helena’s and Lumen’s names?” Nick asked. “Will you call Juliet and Rosa by name?”
She stared at him. Then her eyes flashed. Her pupils widened, and she looked over at the Mark 3s in the doorway. A slight thinning of Rie’s lips was all the signal Nick needed.
“The Host has approved of Nick’s names, and his reasoning behind issuing them,” Chloe said abruptly.
“The Host also approved a few other things,” Rie muttered. She opened her mouth to say something else, then closed it. “Fine. Her name is Lumen. Happy?”
Not really. Rie hadn’t answered his question. But the Mark 3s stopped glaring at their superior.
Nick made a note to follow up on this later. Rie obviously had some strange hang-up about names, and he didn’t want it blowing up at the worst possible moment. If they were partners, it would help to understand each other better.
Although her pouty look was cute.
“I imagine Lucas wants to be able to cut ties to his imports business if he gets a tap on the shoulder,” Nick said. “That might have been part of the deal back when Kushiel paid him a visit.”
Rie frowned. “I still need to speak to her about that. She was more involved in the organization of the Tartarus raid than I expected, as well.”
And with that, Nick realized they had come full circle to his original topic. Namely, that of the investigation.
Rie craned her head as she looked around his bedroom and her hands ran through his blanket and sheet. While Nick didn’t doubt she was paying attention to him, he also knew that she was paying just as much attention to his apartment.
“Before you arrived, I’d just run through my summary of the investigation,” he said.
Rie’s eyes flashed, then she nodded. “I see. Before we answer your questions, I’ll answer the unasked one you have on your mind now. Kushiel was at the forefront of the military’s objections to the raid on Tartarus. She is the bridge between the Neo Babylon Police Department and the military.”
“Do you know why she objected?” Nick asked.
“Officially? Yes. A number of contracts and legally binding undertakings had been lodged in the courts—both publicly and in secret—following the dissolution of Neural Spike Distributors. Semantics aside, if the police breached them, then Neo Westphalia would have violated its own legal obligations. The military believed that would deeply harm them and the Spires in the long run.”
“Yet it still happened?” Nick was nonplussed. The argument seemed sound.
“The Spires breaches these obligations with some frequency.”
“Ah.”
Nick had almost forgotten that the laws of Babylon were not applied quite as rigorously as some thought they were. While the automated courts processed matters at a speed that made the antiquated legal systems of old seem almost barbaric, there were still cases from decades ago that hadn’t been resolved.
While he mulled over this fact, he fired up his social connections on his computer. The usual garbage rolled in, but the Cipher feeds seemed unusually active. That might be worth looking into in a moment.
“What about the unofficial explanation?” he asked Rie, trying not to get too distracted.
“I can only guess. I do not like to guess at matters quite this political.” She frowned.
“Try. I don’t know anything about Kushiel or military politics.”
“The most obvious conclusion is that the military opposed the raid. Either because they supported Tartarus for some reason, or because they felt their own political position was in danger. Their official position supports the latter, and their actions so far have as well. They are intently focused on ‘stealing the thunder’ of the new NLF mods.” Rie paused.
He didn’t miss the way the Mark 3s shifted uncomfortably. “I take it that there’s another reason we need to rush.”
“Have you seen today’s news?” she asked. “You don’t have an implant, so I wasn’t sure.”
Nick looked back at his computer. But rather than pull up a news page, he glanced at his Cipher feeds.
The neural mod feeds were absolutely overloaded with new users. The questions were all basic stuff, but it was a virtual cacophony of people screaming into the Altnet for help. If Nick was using his VR setup, he’d probably be deafened by them.
“Aesir just did something crazy again, didn’t they,” he said, referring to one of the largest consumer electronics companies in the world.
“All implants older than a decade will have their functionality deprecated unless they install a premium mod from the company,” Rie said with a stony expression. “Interest in black company neural mods to circumvent the restrictions has grown exponentially since the midnight announcement.”
“I can imagine,” Nick said drily. “Almost nobody gets their implant replaced, given the huge risk of permanent brain damage. It’s incremental upgrades and mods all the way. I thought the Spires banned this shit after Aesir bricked half the isles’ neural mods right before the riots?”
“21.5%,” Chloe corrected automatically. “There have already been numerous legal challenges launched from many parties.”
Rie nodded. “Indeed. That is the problem. The civil courts will be overloaded and will handle the Tartarus cases far slower. This means the commissioner won’t get his public win through public prosecutions. He’s concerned that the military will steal his thunder with the NLF.”
Nick leaned back and let out a rough sigh.
Half the city’s population was screaming because a gigantic corporate conglomerate was farming money from their brains, and his problem was that this might negatively affect his boss’s ability to make himself look good.
“It’ll also slow down Lucas,” he added. “While a lot of Ciphers won’t touch this”—he waved a hand at the helpless screaming he saw on his feed—“there are just as many who won’t miss this chance to teach the masses the benefits of neural modding. This is probably the biggest gateway event in my lifetime.”
The eyes of the Archangels—including Rie—flashed. They then scowled.
“You are likely correct. The NLF may use this as a chance to seed their own mod into the populace,” Rie said.
Nick raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t that be fairly easy to track?”
“It should be. We can detect almost all neural mods with a scan, but this will make it easier. Any individual with an old neural implant from Aesir will need a neural mod or the official premium mod to avoid reduced functionality. Unfortunately, it won’t be useful within our timeframe and it may not avoid a catastrophe if the NLF is able to recruit en masse.”
Leaning backward in his chair, Nick pressed his knuckles into his temples.
He felt as though everything was pressuring him to somehow barrel through an investigation with no useful leads. The military were involved, possibly because they had political beef over the Tartarus raid. The police commissioner expected results ASAP. Nick couldn’t do much with his security dolls until he helped Rie get a major win.
