Neural Wraith, page 40
“When would he find the time or expertise to pull all this off?” Rie asked. “That is why we have discounted him. Much of what the culprit has done requires considerable talent or connections.”
“Tell me, have you ever met the Ciphers that Lieu claims to work with?” He raised an eyebrow and stopped on the stairwell. “He said that he usually does the rounds with new hires. But what new hires? Hammond indicated that the Archangels are taking everyone’s jobs.”
Rie looked at Chloe, who looked at Meta. She shook her head.
“The Host has presumed such Ciphers were communicated to off-network or did not exist. Captain Lieu is known to lie in his performance reports.”
“Yeah. Hammond says he’s a snake. Kim says he’s a man justifying his career. But that just means he’s a great actor. Dallas even said as much about the culprit, and I trust his judgment a lot more than Travis’s.” Nick sighed. “The biggest piece of evidence was right in front of us: his predecessor. Lieu conducted an investigation into a crime with no witnesses and no evidence. Does the report even exist?”
“It does. Chief Andrews was innocent of the murder. The previous captain attempted to assault her using a hacked Liberator…” Rie trailed off. “You believe Lieu killed his predecessor.”
“Obviously. Our culprit has pulled all this off without being noticed, and even snuck Helena’s physical unit into evidence storage. By comparison, it would be trivial for Lieu to hack a Liberator, kill his predecessor, cover it up, and use the suspicion toward Andrews as his own cover story. And look at where we are now: the culprit has overridden the police mainframes, probably military warbots, and has erased evidence. The behavior matches.”
He leveled his gaze at Rie. “It’s Lieu.”
“Why?” she asked.
“I, uh, don’t know.” He shrugged when she glared at him. “Travis is the only person who ascribed a motive, and he’s unreliable. Maybe Lieu just wants a comfortable retirement and thinks he can sell Helena to somebody?”
“And he’ll purchase a ticket to a space elevator?” Rie asked, a hand on her hip. “How would Lieu cover up Lu Export Import?”
“He didn’t. The Spires did. Kim didn’t seem surprised that his brother’s money was connected to this whole shitshow, which means they may have spotted the fraud and chosen to ignore it. After all, it would be embarrassing. His family can eat that money, but he’s politically ambitious. The loss of face is more damaging.”
“The truth eventually came out?”
“Did it? How many people saw the story about the RTM factories, during a day with the Aesir announcement and the mercs attacking Archangels in public? He’s the commissioner. He knew that if the fraud was outed by the police, he’d be able to spin it.”
Nick realized he was getting distracted. They had arrived at the right floor. Lieu’s office was supposedly just a short walk away.
Rather than blow the door open, Rie and the Mark 3s overrode it. Nick didn’t ask how. There was no heavy security door here.
There were dozens of Liberators and Custodians, however. Gunfire erupted the moment they tried to enter the floor.
A railgun shell slammed into the far concrete wall. Meta shoved Nick into a wall, out-of-sight of the hallway. The rest vanished through the doorway, and she followed them.
He waited, hand on his gun. The roars of railguns, clunk-clunk-clunk of the automatic shotguns, and booms of the Liberator hand cannons assailed his ears. Every second felt like an eternity.
But no matter how much bravado he might conjure, he wasn’t stepping into that firefight. His gun might take out a Liberator, but even his anti-armor rounds would bounce off the Custodians. This was a handgun, not a railgun or a full-powered shotgun.
By contrast, a single shot from any of the police dolls would turn him into chunky salsa. And they wouldn’t miss. The Archangels had far superior accuracy, but in an area this small it wouldn’t matter. Nick was a big target, and their guns would vaporize him.
So he waited.
After a minute, Chloe re-entered the stairwell. She was missing an arm, and countless scrapes covered her chassis.
“The floor is clear. Preliminary scan has detected Captain Lieu inside his office. Rie wishes for you to confront him with her,” Chloe said.
Nick placed his hands on her shoulders. “I take it you’re getting a new unit after this.”
She frowned. “I would prefer repairs. With the investigation finished, it is not a high priority to be deployed and I… have grown attached to this unit.” She licked her lips. “Is that alright?”
“It’s your body. You get to choose.”
“Thank you,” she said, then gripped his hand with her remaining one and led him into the carnage.
None of the other Archangels had been destroyed. Meta had managed to avoid sustaining any serious damage. Juliet and Rosa both had chunks missing, but had kept all of their limbs. Rie seemed unharmed, which amazed Nick.
She stood outside an office. The windows were black, and the door was shut. This was presumably Lieu’s office, but there was no signage visible. It was probably in the Altnet.
“Is your armor harder than theirs?” he asked her.
“No, but I have other protection systems.” She smiled and placed a hand over her chest.
“I thought you said that was an enlarged battery.”
“And I can do some very interesting things with my enlarged battery.”
Nick didn’t probe too deeply. There was a reason that the prototype specifications remained secret, he supposed. They might have hardware in them that the production units didn’t have access to.
“Shall we?” Rie asked, her hand on the office door.
He nodded and then stepped inside.
Captain Lieu stood over his desk, an array of ancient physical electronics in front of him.
CHAPTER 33
The lights of Neo Babylon glittered through the windows behind Lieu. At some point, it had started raining and droplets ran in streaks down the glass.
Lieu himself was dressed in a suit, but missing the tie. His jacket lay across a sofa in the corner. An underarm holster with a small service pistol was the only visible weapon on him. Too small to be effective against a doll.
He still reached for it anyway. Rie’s railgun whined and glowed, causing him to freeze. Nick kept his gun by his side, but his grip remained tight.
“You know, I wondered what this would be like,” Nick said as he sauntered in. “If it was Kim, I thought there might be some fancy showdown. He’d deploy gun turrets from the ceiling, and custom G7s would pop out from the hidden closets.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What is this—” Lieu tried to say.
“Don’t waste your breath. You tried to erase your presence, but you’re still here. Once the Archangels go through these, it’ll be over.” Nick waved a hand at the assorted devices on Lieu’s desk. “The hell did you even pull this off for? Did you think you could fight off the Archangels with the police force?”
“How did you know I was here?”
Nick looked around with arms spread. “This is your office, isn’t it? Mainframe security protocols limit off-site access. Travis had to implement a specific backdoor to shut down Tartarus, but you’d be taken out by the Archangels if you tried that. So you had to be here, and somewhere that wouldn’t raise alerts.”
Lieu nodded, and a resigned smile crossed his face. “This is why I wanted you in the department. You’re so used to physicality. You don’t think like the dolls or the dumb Ciphers we reel in from the black companies.”
The hell did that mean?
Nick’s eyes fell on the devices in front of him. They looked like old computers, tablets, storage devices, and other antiques that had no business in the office of a Cipher. Let alone a Cipher with a fancy neural implant. They even used cables.
“Is this how you’re operating off-network?” he asked, bemused.
“Impressed? I can’t copy you, but I can learn from how you operated in Neural Spike. The only person of importance who walked away from that mess was the one man whose mind they couldn’t unravel.” Lieu tapped on a small box where all the cables terminated. “The Archangels can hijack almost any wireless or neural signal effortlessly. So to become invisible, I moved to technology they wouldn’t bother with.”
Nick looked at Rie, who hadn’t lowered her gun. She frowned.
“His devices are archaic. But his neural implant is not. He has an NLF neural mod,” she said. “I imagine it propagated the NLF signal through the police mainframes, however.”
Lieu’s eyes darted to the Archangel, then to her weapon. He stared at Nick, unmoving and unspeaking.
“Can you step outside, Rie?” Nick asked.
She looked at him, and he looked back.
“The investigation is over,” she said. “We arrest him and—”
“Do nothing until the others reach Kim’s office and override the lockdown. None of these devices can touch the mainframes. Lieu’s done everything himself. So why don’t we talk about that,” he said.
She lowered her gun. With a meaningful look, she stepped outside.
Given his earpieces, she could hear everything that took place inside. But Lieu didn’t know that. If it made him feel comfortable, Nick didn’t care.
“So you compromised the police mainframes years ago,” Nick said.
If Lieu wanted to talk, let him talk. Nick had a feeling he was building up to something.
Lieu nodded. “Easily, too. I’ve been routing much of my activity through the security connections they maintain to the rest of the Spire. Refusing to replace mainframes this old should be criminal.”
Nick had to agree. The result had been that they’d been compromised years or even decades ago.
“How’d you keep this from the Archangels?” he asked.
“The Ciphers maintain the mainframes, not them. When they first rolled out the Archangels, I merely mentioned the security risks of allowing their unique network access to the mainframes. Like magic, Sigma curtailed their permissions before delivery.” Lieu shrugged. “Then it was merely a matter to keep my activities subtle. And hidden. That’s why I shifted to these.”
The captain gestured to the archaic devices once again.
Suddenly, more things clicked in Nick’s mind.
“Is that why all the Ciphers here are so incompetent?” Nick asked. “I thought it was just the usual government incompetence, but you surely had better Ciphers to choose from during downsizing.”
“Hah. Yes. It’s funny what you can get away with as a captain. Everyone else just smiles and nods when you propose firing the competent staff and keeping the idiots.” Lieu gave a bitter laugh, then leaned on the table. “It’s funny. I wanted you in the bureau, out of raw respect, but now I realize that was a huge mistake. The moment I let somebody competent in, I was screwed.”
Nick hadn’t even looked at the police mainframes, to be honest.
“What about Hammond?” He narrowed his eyes.
“Paul is… different.” Lieu grimaced, then slid around the table.
Nick’s fingers tightened around his handgun.
“I figured you’d understand, or have realized by now. The department is rotten to the core. The Spires as well. The more we’ve relied on dolls, the worse things have gotten. What they did to Paul’s father and so many other veterans of the riots was disgraceful.” Lieu’s expression hardened. “You’re one of the few people who avoids being consumed by these dream eaters.”
“Wait… you’re NLF?” Nick blurted out. “You didn’t build the new group as a distraction for the mercs, you hired the mercs to help the NLF.”
“No, I’m not part of the NLF. I’m their creator. Their puppet master.” Lieu moved a little closer again. “No terrorist group can change Babylon. Just as no politician can undo the rot. What I learned here was that the systems themselves are what shapes society. The Spires and the rest of the city are always at odds—the riots were inevitable, just as another one will be soon. You realize that, don’t you?”
Nick kept his thoughts off his face.
Because as he looked at the cityscape past Lieu, he found himself agreeing.
Or a part of him agreed. Nick was less sure about the idea of “inevitability” these days.
Tensions were rising in Babylon. Companies were becoming greedier. Politicians attempted to force their values down the throats of everyone. The police presence had grown and grown. Dolls and robots intruded on every sector of the city and every job.
If Kim’s dream of automating everything happened, would the city survive it?
But then, would the city survive the chaos of another riot? Or one with foreign mercenaries and implant-boosted revolutionaries behind it? Or a crackdown by militarized police dolls?
“Why are you asking me?” Nick said.
“Because you’re the Wraith. The only Cipher without an implant. Infamous even to the police, known across the Altnet, and someone who carved out a life in this oppressive shithole.” Lieu grinned. “I was lost years ago, when all I saw was a police department burning itself down and a city rotting away. Then you escaped Neural Spike, and I relearned how to be a Cipher.”
Rocking on his heels, Nick realized what was happening here.
“If the NLF can’t do anything, what did you plan to do?” he asked. “You stayed away from the Archangels, only to throw away everything for a single experimental mainframe?”
“No, not just that. The NLF are powerless by themselves, but that’s because the only thing that can stop the Archangels is something as broad-based as them. Sabotaging the police accomplished nothing over the years and the newer dolls became too hard to control. Instead, I needed to create my own army to fight back.”
“You planned to exploit Aesir’s scheme to spread more NLF implants, didn’t you?”
Nodding, Lieu took another step closer. They were still several feet apart. “It was excellently timed, save for your investigation. The companies that run the world are too stupid, too greedy, to stop themselves from slaying the golden goose. Aesir helped cause the last riots, and here they are fueling the next. That’s proof positive that I’m correct.”
Nick had to admit that Lieu had a point about the companies.
But that ignored the fact that the Spires themselves opposed Aesir. Kim’s words from the other day rang in Nick’s mind. The Spires might be conflicted, but some of them saw the riots as a true threat.
More than anything else. this felt like a ploy. Even if Lieu was being genuine, he needed to escape somehow. He’d initiated this lockdown when he felt the noose tightening. While the evidence pointed at Kim, once the Archangels had dug into the mainframes they would have found the true source—Lieu.
“The lockdown was just a means to escape, wasn’t it?” Nick asked.
Lieu stopped moving. “How so?”
“You’re monitoring the databases. Once we arrived after probing the evidence logs, you panicked. Rie would have confronted Kim, who would have authorized her to use his access. He adores dolls too much to take the fall over pride. Then she would have found you, scurrying around in the mainframes.”
“Yes.” Lieu’s expression darkened. “I don’t know how you even found out about the evidence storage. That was the one thing I was certain I did right. All the Liberators and Custodians had their memories modified. The transport’s record was erased and blended into the rest of the armored transports during the raids.”
“The mercs knew you’d double-cross them. They tracked Helena back here, but failed to retrieve the information.”
“That’s why I switched vehicles,” Lieu protested. “The truck and the transport have jammers to block third-party tracking.”
Nick shrugged. That was probably why the mercs had used the Tartarus dolls. Like the Archangels, they had vastly more powerful wireless transmitters and receivers than any implant could contain. Kushiel had been able to track his phone from across the city even while it was partially jammed, after all.
“But I found you. What even was your plan here?” Nick asked. “What if you were seen through? This seems terribly planned.”
“All evidence pointed to Kim. By the time you would have reached his office and fought through all the security there, I could have escaped,” Lieu said. “That’s why I erased my own presence. The rogue military warbots would provide a distraction and I’d slip away. Worst case, I’d be discovered outside but nobody could prove I was ever here.”
“Except if they found all these ancient computers,” Nick said. “What do they even do?”
“They allow me to operate off the grid even with my implant active. The true weakness of the neural mod I acquired and distributed is that it can’t be used in public spaces. If I was captured on video in the city with an inactive implant, the Archangels’ passive scanning might detect it. So I needed a way to act while appearing innocent.”
“You acquired the NLF mod?”
Lieu shrugged. “The seller is quite good at masking themselves, like most illegal mod designers. And what does it matter? You understand why—”
“Not really, no. Why Helena? Why experiment on using her with implants? I don’t see what you possibly have to gain. If you oppose dolls, then why would you want a mainframe that excels in controlling many dolls at once. Or in creating new ones.” Nick ran a hand through his hair. “I get your ideology—really, I do. But you’re playing with antiques, creating over-convoluted schemes, starting a terrorist organization full of morons… all to steal a mainframe you don’t understand how to use?”
“You used her. She created the Archangels. When I discovered that the same thing could be done with humans and implants, the idea wrote itself.” Lieu gripped the table and his knuckles whitened. “If you want to fight against a rotten system of absolute control like the Archangels and the Spires, the only way to do it is with the same system, but through humans.”
Nick couldn’t believe what he was hearing. But he noticed that Lieu had taken a step back during his ranting.
