Neural Wraith, page 23
A smattering of wooden pallets loaded down with boxes sat near the offices. Racks of spare parts lined one of the walls. This area seemed to be the only one in active use. Given the size of the factory, it seemed wasteful to use so little space inside it.
Numerous servers lay stacked atop each other, hard linked to each other. A single large tower, half Nick’s height, seemed to be where they all converged. A few terminals lay on a long wooden desk nearby.
No monitors, naturally. Accessibility wasn’t a concern for the revolution. They also didn’t use chairs.
The entire set-up was incredibly hodge-podge. No wonder Rie had been annoyed by it.
Yet Nick somehow found it familiar. He had to cast his mind back quite a few years to remember why.
He deliberately walked away from the NLF members and held up a hand. The others caught onto his intentions and ushered him a little farther away.
“Sound carries inside an empty space like this,” Chloe said. “We cannot rely on AR dampening fields, either.”
He shrugged. “All I wanted to say is that the server set-up is familiar. It’s a little outside my wheelhouse, though.”
“Really?” Rie asked.
“I’m a Cipher, not a systems or computer engineer.” He pointed at her. “I learn about mainframe and doll hardware because it’s integral to what I do. But neural networking? Or even just basic networking on a corporate level? That’s why IT departments still exist.”
The dolls nodded, then waited for him to continue.
“Anyway, it just reminds me a little of…” he trailed off, remembering something important about how the Archangels came to conclusions. “You know what, I’ll bring it up later. Do you know what they do?”
Rie narrowed her eyes at him, but Chloe spoke up anyway.
“We analyzed the network topology and activity before the raid. The neural network shutdown means we cannot assess its functionality in full, however,” she said. “We have not attempted to breach the network security, given the potential risk of self-destruct devices.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” he said drily.
Chloe winced.
“You already have your own opinion,” Rie said coldly.
“I’m comparing notes. I’m pretty confident in my own theory—” he began to say.
Rie stomped on his foot. For a brief moment he thought he was going to be going to hospital for fracture treatment, but she didn’t put any force into the blow.
Well, not much. Nick hissed. “That does hurt, you know.”
“We’re on the clock. I’d rather you not throw my words back in my face,” she said.
Apparently Rie had noticed that he had used the exact same words she did back when she tested him on the investigation briefing. He tried not to laugh, as she seemed genuinely irritated.
The other Archangels looked confused, and Meta in particular seemed anxious after Rie’s violent reaction. Her fingers curled and uncurled while she looked between Nick and Rie.
Chloe shrugged. “It operates as both a signal masker, in order to obfuscate local devices from Altnet monitoring, but also a hub for the neural mods.”
“A hub?” he asked.
“We believe this to be one of the primary servers for the NLF’s encrypted neural network. On the surface, it mimics a simple corporate network like Tartarus’s,” she explained. “All NLF neural mods are connected to one of the factory servers at all times. This presumably allows them to communicate, issue updates, and monitor one another outside of the Altnet.”
“And you didn’t notice that all NLF members had a neural link to the same factories?” he asked.
“Their connection is masked. It is non-trivial to trace the encrypted connections to the end-point, rather than to other nodes in Babylon.”
That made sense to Nick. Anyone who wanted to set-up their own illegal network in Babylon would need to hide the servers and encrypted neural networking protocols made that easy. The entire reason the Spires maintained control over the Altnet was so that they could monitor activity at the source.
The same reasoning applied to the Archangels. They needed power over the security bands—and the regulations that forced all electronics to include a backdoor—to get around the built-in encryption of any neural network.
Anything more complicated was Cipher work, and they’d already established that the Mark 3s were still novices at that.
“And what is your theory?” Rie asked, tapping her fingers against her SMG.
Nick eyed her carefully. That was just a sign of her impatience, right?
“This whole thing reminds me of the set-ups we used to collect training data using Helena and the other mainframes for…” He inclined his head toward the dolls in front of him.
Despite that, he noticed several NLF heads snap toward him the moment he said the name “Helena.” Nick forced himself to stay calm.
Because these bastards did know about her.
“How so?” Rie asked, either oblivious or uncaring about the NLF right now.
“We couldn’t move the mainframes into the field, obviously. But IT could whip something like this up inside a tiny office overnight. And rather than implants or mods, we used dolls. Helena could monitor or tweak their directives—usually because we asked her to—and it would look like ordinary communication. The doll would be effectively oblivious to what was going on under the hood.”
The eyes of all the Archangels flashed, save for Rie’s. She merely crossed her arms beneath her breasts.
“That would require a mainframe. They’re just connected to a dumb server,” she said.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “What if there’s a mainframe elsewhere? It seems pointless to maintain a constant connection here, given the risk it poses to being discovered. I imagine that’s how Lucas would have dug them up with his sweep. Too many people acting suspiciously, all with links back to a pair of RTM factories that aren’t shipping anything for RTM?”
Rie nodded. “We’ll need to investigate the server set-up in detail. That may explain why everything is so crude on the Cipher side. If this is a branch, and the root is elsewhere… Perhaps this wasn’t a waste of time. Even if this cell is a joke.”
Chloe turned toward Rie. “The Mark 3s and I shall begin intrusion. I believe that Nick’s time is better spent on the person of interest.”
“Agreed. We’ll take it from here,” Rie replied.
Chloe trotted off, and a number of Mark 3s rushed over from all corners of the building to join her. However, Juliet and Rosa remained by Nick’s side. Meta shot them a look, but said nothing.
It took Nick a moment to remember who they were talking about.
Then it struck him. Travis.
Rie led him to the guarded door he saw earlier. The room lacked a window.
“He’s in there?” Nick asked.
“Yes. Despite how shoddy everything else is, they installed soundproofed offices.” She rolled her eyes. “Definitely a case of too much money, and no sense of priority.”
For some reason, Nick didn’t think Rie should be the one criticizing others about that.
“I think I should talk to him first,” Nick said.
“Agreed. We—”
“Alone.”
She waited patiently for an explanation.
“You said he’s an idiot, right? But he’s someone I worked with for a few years. Travis was a pretty typical guy. Hated management, did as much work as required, decent Cipher, had as much of a bone to pick with the Spires as the next guy. Or so it seemed.” Nick leaned on the door. “But he might not see through me, much like I didn’t look closely at him.”
“He may be harmless, but I don’t believe he’ll provide much help,” Rie said.
“Then in the worst case, you can crack his head open and feast on his neural implant if I fail.”
“What exactly do you think we are, Nicholas?”
The other Archangels made concerned faces at his gruesome joke. Apparently it wasn’t to their taste.
“Look, let me have a chance. If anyone knows something about Helena, it’s him. He was the man on the inside. He’s my lead,” Nick said.
For a moment, he wondered if Rie might refuse him purely because he’d brought up Helena.
Then she sighed and held a hand out. “You shouldn’t wear your gun in if you’re playing innocent to Travis. We can intervene within an instant if he does anything stupid. For advice: be vague, non-threatening, and don’t bring us up. Let him fill in the blanks.”
Nick nodded, then unholstered his gun. A moment later, he also threw his coat to Rie, who nearly fumbled it as it practically buried her.
“I want to look as little like a detective as possible,” he said. “Wish me luck.”
“Luck,” the other Archangels echoed.
Rie rolled her eyes. “Good luck, Nick.”
He wondered whether the Archangels actually didn’t understand that saying or if they were intentionally acting obtuse.
Then he opened the door and saw his old colleague sitting in a crummy plastic chair. The room was otherwise empty, and Travis was zip cuffed.
The door clicked shut behind Nick.
“Been a few days, Travis. Here I thought you’d gotten away clean from the Tartarus mess.”
CHAPTER 18
Travis looked almost identical to the day Tartarus had gone down. That made a lot of sense, given that happened on Wednesday, and it was now Saturday. Three days didn’t change a man.
He had lost the ill-fitting suit, however. The gray and blue baggy clothes weren’t much of an improvement. If he’d been wearing a helmet, the Archangels had tossed it aside.
“Nick? What the fuck are you doing here?” Travis asked. Then his eyes narrowed. “You aren’t cuffed.”
Standing over his former colleague wouldn’t help, so Nick slumped on the floor by the door. He then spread his hands.
Vague. Rie had told him to be vague. That seemed easy enough, given how little Nick knew.
“Obviously not,” he said. “I’m looking for Helena. I know you sabotaged Tartarus to help them grab her.”
“How did you walk in here with all the damned police dolls locking down the building?” Well, it turned out Travis wasn’t that dumb. “You vanished after Tartarus. I even asked if you got popped in the smash-and-grab, but they said nobody was there.”
It took every ounce of Nick’s willpower to not react.
Travis knew the people who had raided Tartarus directly. He was a fucking gold mine!
“Like I said, I’m here to ask about Helena. You know I have history with her. That makes me the best person to find her, as she seems to have gone missing,” Nick said, sticking to his idea of vague but on message. “And you seem to be the only real Cipher here.”
“Missing… The whole point of a smash-and-grab is to steal something, Nick. Of course she’s not in Tartarus.”
Nick rolled his eyes. “Not from Tartarus. She’s not where she’s supposed to be. Nobody’s happy about that. I suspect you aren’t, either.”
He was swinging for the fences here, but Travis was playing hard to get. Something about this entire setup bothered Nick, however.
Why would somebody fund the NLF to this extent just for the bomb threats? There were far cheaper and easier ways to cover up a raid.
The timeline also didn’t add up.
The hardware for the NLF and those foreign goods had been secured at roughly the same time, through the same company. And Rie seemed to think not all of that hardware was accounted for.
There had to be another operation. Either Travis might give away that Helena was there, or that the reason the NLF had visited the docks was because they were double-crossed.
Nearly a minute passed in silence while Travis simply stared at him, visibly chewing on his thoughts.
Finally, Travis said, “Where do you think she’s supposed to be?”
Ah, shit. Nick hid his frustration with years of experience dealing with annoying managers.
Maybe he should have let Chloe properly investigate those servers. If he was wrong…
Think, dammit, he told himself.
There hadn’t been any signs of preparation for a major expansion in hardware outside. No huge power cables, nor the proper mounting hardware for a mainframe.
“Not here, obviously. But that setup out there was for her,” Nick said. “I know it well enough. Makes me realize you probably knew a lot more about Neural Spike than you let on. But like I said, I’m here to find her. Helena is useless to both of us if you don’t tell me where she’s actually gone.”
Travis nodded slowly. “How’d you get past the police dolls?”
Nick wanted to fake a laugh, but didn’t really have the acting chops. He settled for a shrug. “I walked away from Neural Spike and Tartarus. Do the math.”
“Could be a plant.”
“Could be.”
Travis snorted. “Like I’d believe that. Nobody gave a shit about Tartarus, but you’re the only person who understands the value of Helena. If the military or police knew, they would never have let us get close. I’m guessing our patron made you a deal after his foreign mercs stabbed us all in the back?”
Things had just gotten really juicy. Nick knew he’d fuck this up, soon, but wanted to get as much as he could.
“I made a deal, but never met him. Like with the factories, it was all through false identities.” Alright, so now Nick was just flat-out making shit up and hoping it stuck.
“You noticed that as well? Lotta idiots think the fucking CEO of RTM Strategic is trying to bring down the Spires himself.” Travis rolled his eyes. “Nah. I spoke with him once, over the Altnet. He’s doing this because of how fucked up things got after the riots. He’s a man who understands how rotten everything is to the core, not some rich asshole. A drive like that can’t be faked. The fuck did he even send you here?”
A flare of doubt flickered within Nick upon hearing about this description. But he suppressed it for now.
“You said the mercs are behind this? If they’ve still got her, then you don’t need to worry. It’s just some miscommunication,” Nick said.
“Fuck. Did he think we were going rogue?” Travis muttered to himself. “Prove something. If you have the sort of connections I know our patron has, have the dolls uncuff me.”
Without anything to lose, Nick did exactly that. The conversation was running in circles a little, but he’d learned a ton already. Enough to work with, anyway. If bringing an Archangel in didn’t help, then they were still well off.
He opened the door, careful not to open it too far for Travis. Now that he was paying attention, he might freak out if he saw Rie.
“Uncuff him,” he told a Mark 3. They were almost certainly listening in through his phone, assuming they hadn’t bugged the room or couldn’t hear through the soundproofing.
Without responding, the Mark 3 stepped inside and walked over to Travis. The man’s eyes widened at the unfamiliar model.
“What the fu—” he gasped out.
Then he fell silent as the doll snapped his zip cuffs, then left with them. The door snapped shut once again.
“Well?” Nick said. “They’re the Mark 3s. Brought in by special contract with Sigma.”
“Damn. He really was the real deal. Haven’t heard a thing about them on the Altnet.”
That meant that Travis had truly gone cold, as the Mark 3s had kicked up a storm. Sigma still hadn’t revealed their spec sheet, but they’d been strutting the streets with Nick and probing suspected NLF agents for the past day.
Travis rubbed his wrists, then looked back at Nick. “Don’t know much about the foreigners. Bunch of mercs stuffed full of cybernetics and really expensive toys. The idea was that I put in the backdoor in Tartarus while everyone is distracted by the train delays. Then they’d grab Helena, and we’d finally have a real distributed mainframe to play with. Something that could actually tap into our implants.”
The final sentence sent a chill down Nick’s spine.
“That can what? Travis, are you fucking insane?” Nick snapped, breaking character.
“What?” The older man looked taken aback.
“You don’t let mainframes into your implant. The idea is that you go into their—Fuck.” Nick paced and ran a hand through his hair. “I knew that set-up looked fucking off the moment I saw it. And the neural mods… No wonder the military is all over them.”
“They’re what?” Travis shot to his feet. “Come on, we need to get the fuck out. If the Archangels are here, then the military know where we are. Even our patron can’t override their damn hive mind. I’m not getting gunned down by fucking Kushiel. Let’s fucking go, we can hide at…”
He was at the door before he suddenly trailed off.
Pity. Rie would have been over the moon if Travis had been dumb enough to give away their next location.
“Why the hell would he have sent you here with Archangels and not Liberators? Or Custodians? Or something that isn’t tracking us?” Travis asked, eyes widening in horror. “Nick, you’re—”
The man’s fists clenched, his stance squared off, and he prepared to launch himself at Nick.
Then Meta entered the room and floored him in the blink of an eye. “Aggression levels too high. Interrogation ended.”
“Thanks, Meta,” Nick said drily. “I think it ended a few seconds earlier, though.”
Rie had been right that Travis wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. A decent sleeper agent, by virtue of mediocrity and a simple enough job, but he was in over his head.
Nick stepped outside the room where Rie waited. She was biting her lip.
“I’d say we got enough, even if the military intervenes,” Nick said.
“They’re not intervening. I’ve liaised with Kushiel, and they are satisfied if we provide them with all the evidence found here,” she said.
“Physically or…”
“Yes. I’ll stall them for a little while by providing a written brief, as they weren’t specific enough. The commissioner has also requested that I immediately brief the police executive and the board about the operation. Information control on the Altnet is weaker than expected, so we are releasing suppression early,” she continued.
