Data Runner (9 page)

A blast of static sounds like it contains a voice but it's so faint I can't make it out.

“Dex, the door won't open!”

The voices turn the corner and become three shadowy figures. The round one in the middle can only be Vlad. There's no point hiding it now. I turn the knob all the way to the right and call for Dex again, but this time the static contains nothing.

“Dex cannot hear you,” says Vlad as he steps close enough for his silhouette to take on color. In his oversized hand he holds a mechanical jammer, the kind that also works on radio signals.

I try the door again. Again. Again and again.

“That won't open. These doors have all been locked by remote security. Why you come back here?”

Okay think
, I tell myself. If I can't get out of it, I may as well get some answers. “You cheated in Martin's game. I saw the shoe.”

“Cheated,” he says. “No, not cheated. Martin Baxter always come to gaming parlor with his math genius. I merely stabilize the game.”

“What about that guy at the poker table? Were you stabilizing his game?”

“Him? No. Somebody pay to get him into debt with us. After thirty-day grace period, we sell them his note.”

Sirens go off in my head. Suddenly Martin's debt takes on a whole new dimension. The syndicate was just the middleman. They didn't have any interest in him personally. So who did? “Who paid you to get Martin into debt?”

Vlad scrunches his face like he isn't going to tell me but soon relaxes it back into a smile. “What the hell, I like you better than her.”

“Who?”

“Snooty French woman from Grumwell. Like all French. I never trust the French.”

“Wait, what French woman from Grumwell?”

“You don't know?”

I shake my head.

“Don't worry,” he says. “You meet her soon. She give instructions for us to detain you.”

“Detain me? Detain me for what?”

Vlad shrugs. “If pay is good, I don't ask why.
Why
is…how you say…anathema to business.” Vlad and his goons inch closer. “Now I'm afraid we must detain you until she arrives.”

The bar of the door presses into my body armor as I back into it as they advance. Then, CRACK!

Wait, that isn't me.

CRRRACK!

Vlad and his men stop cold. “What is that?” he asks.

Just then the door that won't open is ripped clean out of its frame and dragged away by the revving engine of an old Buick.

“What the hell is this?” Vlad exclaims. “Go get him!”

But I am already through the exit and bolting for the car's open window. Dex waits for me with both hands on the wheel and his foot poised over the pedal. Ready to slam the gas the moment I'm in.

Ten feet from the car I have to make a snap decision how to enter the window—head or feet first. There is no time to stall. I dive in headfirst and push off the door with my hands to get as much of my torso into the car as I can. Dex guns it. My armor causes me to rock back and forth in the window frame as the tires kick dirt and the car takes off, towing behind it the back door of the syndicate that is still tied to the rear of the vehicle.

Vlad's men pull their guns. Fire.

The metallic grind of a heavy metal door being dragged along asphalt is loud enough to drown out the report, but I see the muzzle flashes through the dirt cloud near the building. They get off two rounds. One goes nowhere, the other ricochets off the car. That's it for now. We get away as Dex speeds the car up the road.

Legs still dangling out the passenger side window, I practically have to yell over the dragging door. “That was subtle.”

Dex offers a not-so-subtle smile. “You know me, Jack. Subtlety is my specialty.”

I pull myself into the car and turn around to check out our tow. “I'm surprised it didn't rip the bumper off.”

“I anchored it to the frame.”

“Should we cut it loose?”

“I kind of like it,” says Dex with a sidelong glance. “It's like putting a baseball card in the spoke of your bicycle tire. It serves a purpose.”

“What purpose is that?”

“It lets people know you're coming.”

From the moment I wake up, I know it's going to be a long day.

Dex and I have to get an early start heading into the Free City, which means I have to get up even earlier to put in an appearance at school. Dexter and Pace are in the Distributive Education program, so they're both getting school credit for running the sneakernet, but for me there is no more credit to give. From the moment I arrived at Brentwood High, the administration didn't know what to do with me. I had already earned all the core credits I needed to graduate back at the magnet academy, and there was no advanced placement curriculum for me here in Brentwood, so they did they only thing they could. They put me on Independent Study and let me spend my days in the school labs working on pet projects.

It isn't too bad. The labs aren't as well equipped as they were back at the magnet academy, but at least here I don't have people constantly looking over my shoulder. Even my faculty advisor, Mr. Chupick, leaves me alone. That ends up being productive. It was here in the school labs that I built those two rodent repellers for Dex and me. That was something I never could have gotten away with back at the academy. They regarded stuff like that as juvenile. Fickle. The wares of a less serious mind. But here in Brentwood nobody cares. Granted, I could do all that stuff in my own basement. There is nothing in the school labs that Martin doesn't already have down there—and more—but that's his space. Of course it's also mine to use anytime I need, but I prefer not to. The way I see it, Martin and I each need our own space to work. The basement is his; the labs at school are mine.

All Mr. Chupick asks in return for my freedom is that I present him with each project upon completion. Which on this early morning is a piece of code.

“It's designed to do what?” he asks.

“To tag Moreau.”

“What about the tracker code you wrote last month?”

“It didn't stick.”

Mr. Chupick didn't know much about the undernet before he met me. He hadn't even heard of Morlock until the day I explained it to him, let alone the infamous Morlock leader named Moreau. But now he knows all about both and my mission to find the second in order to become the first. Mr. Chupick swipes through pages of code, stopping only when he gets to the math. “I see you're using a Taylor series to approximate some function, but this 7th Gen programming language is all Greek to me.” He volleys the code from his trans screen back onto my thin screen. “Let me know how it works out.”

Mr. Chupick's desk is covered with a mess of topography charts, something I've been meaning to ask him about since I first walked in. “What's all this about?”

“Old geological surveys. Since I can't get any information from Blackburn about the water in my well, I was hoping there might be something in the old public records.”

“Those still exist?”

Mr. Chupick gives me a knowing grin. “If you know where to look for them.”

I lift the corners of a few charts and flip through them. “Did you find anything?”

It's an obvious no. “These are all surface maps. I don't think there's anything in here to find. What I really need are the geological surveys that the Blackburn Corps of Engineers took after the hydrofracking disaster.” Mr. Chupick puts it aside. “Are you running today?”

“I am.” I check the time. “In fact, I have to get going.”

Mr. Chupick eyes me like he already knows that today's run is different because as of today I am no longer running to pay off the syndicate. Today, I'm running for the cash. Today, I'm running for me.

“You know, Jack. There was once an Ancient Greek philosopher who demonstrated mathematically that no matter how far you run, you can never truly reach your goal.”

“How's that?”

“It's called Zeno's Paradox. Let's say that you have a goal, and that you are now
x
distance away from that goal. Before you can cover that distance you first have to cover half that distance. And before you can cover that half-distance, you first have to cover one-quarter that distance. And before you can cover that quarter-distance, you first have to cover one-eighth of that distance. And so on. And so no matter how near or far your goal may be, you're never more than halfway there.”

“Because abstract space can be parsed infinitely?”

“Not just space,” says Mr. Chupick. “The goal doesn't have to be a distance, it can be a dollar amount too. And when your goal is a dollar amount, a funny thing happens. Even when the goal is never out of your sight, it will always be just beyond your reach.”

I think I know what he's getting at.

“Zeno's Paradox.” Mr. Chupick gives me an easy smile. “Just something to keep in mind.”

My plan was to do the entire run with Dex, but halfway into the Free City my wing starts to buzz, so at the last minute we decide to split up. I'll pick up my load first and then rendezvous with him on the sneakernet to give him extra support for his run. Once his cargo is secure, I'll deliver mine. If all goes well, we'll have plenty of time to grab some Free City pizza before we head back to Brentwood. And then later on tonight, I can lay it all out for Martin. Give him the note. Show him my tag. Let him know that this is how I'm going to save up my tuition for NEIT, and that's that. And once that is settled, I can tell Martin all about his blackjack game being a setup and find out about this French woman from Grumwell—who she is and why she would hire the syndicate to gain leverage over him.

Like I said: long day.

To my surprise, my pick-up point is TerraAqua, a business you wouldn't think would need Arcadian Transport's top dollar
when security is the only option
service. I can't imagine the water collective dealing in anything that high value. But they're the client, and they've agreed to pay the bill, so who am I to question their motives? Besides, if it does end up being a light run, I should be grateful to draw it. Easy money doesn't come along very often. Mind you, that's assuming I even get to it, because after nearly ten minutes of me waiting for her to sort it out, the receptionist still has no clue what's going on.

“You said you're here to pick up?” she asks again.

And for the fifth time, “yes.”

I check my watch. My rendezvous with Dex is approaching quickly, and I don't want to leave him hanging.

“From Arcadian Transports?”

Once again, “yes.”

“And your name?”

That's a new one. Usually I just say I'm from Arcadian Transports, and they tell me exactly where to go, sometimes even escort me there. No one has ever asked for my name before. “The Carrion,” I say.

“The
what
,” she stumbles, “
kay-ron
?”

“Carrion,” I repeat. “The Carrion.”

“I'm sorry, I need your actual name.”

“That's it.”

“Carrion?”

For some reason, I think of Red Tail. “That's Arcadian policy. Every runner goes by his or her handle. There's no other name to give.”

“Okay,” she says. “Let me…let me call upstairs.”

That phone call takes another ten minutes, and I begin to wonder if maybe I shouldn't check in with Arcadian to make sure they didn't give me the wrong pick-up spot, but finally she hangs up the phone. “You can see Ms. Doyle on forty-three.”

“Ms. Doyle on forty-three,” I repeat and make my way past reception to the elevators.

Running data in the Free City, you get to learn the buildings pretty quick. The TerraAqua administrative offices take up floors 41‒43 of the Wainwright Building. Waiting for the express elevator, I read the trans screens in the elevator lobby. One is a bulletin screen indicating time, temperature, and a bold notice that the 28th floor is under construction. The other is tuned to the Free City news stream, where they continue to discuss Blackburn's increasingly dire situation. As if the malfeasance charges last month weren't bad enough, now they're on the verge of complete bankruptcy. Apparently, if the company doesn't see a major cash infusion in the next few days, it will fold. That's what they say, anyway; but I know better. The North American Alliance cannot go even one day without an active military, and there is no other defense contractor big enough to take over all of Blackburn's operations without any interruption in service, so the Alliance Senate can't allow Blackburn to fold. They just can't. Unless of course they already have some backup plan that they're just not telling anyone about.

Up on forty-three, I am greeted at reception by Ms. Doyle's administrative assistant, who walks me through the suite to the woman's office. Mostly the people I see are undistinguishable, but there is one guy who leers at me nervously from an end cubicle. We do make eye contact, but he breaks it off quickly and disappears around his fuzzy wall before Ms. Doyle's assistant notices him. It happens quickly, but it's enough for me to register him. Forties and balding with a moderately trimmed beard, he wears a tweed coat with burgundy elbow patches and khaki pants. I don't look back because I don't want to draw attention to a man who obviously doesn't want to be seen, but as we continue to Ms. Doyle's office, I feel him watching us from behind.

“Come in,” says the middle-aged woman with the beehive hairdo, knees-to-neck dress and glasses on an old lady chain. Obviously her entire look is supposed to be ironic—you don't have to look very hard to see the holes in her face where the piercings usually go, and I'm sure under all that fabric is an entire canvas of body art. “Come in. You must be Mr. Carrion.”

Mr. Carrion? Wonderful. She thinks my handle is my proper name. But since correcting her would require an explanation I don't have time for, I let it slide. “Yes,” I reply. And check my watch again.

“I'm sorry for the confusion,” she says. “I did find a purchase order requesting data courier service, but there's no indication on the paperwork of who put it through or what it was supposed to be for.”

“You mean, you don't know?”

“That's just it. No department has any outgoing cargo scheduled for today. And the purchase order was never processed, so I don't know how your people would have even been contacted. We've never used your firm before. It's just not in our budget. As far as I know we don't even have an account with you, so the money to pay for it would've had to come from discretionary spending, and there's no way a check that size would have been cut without approval from accounting.”

“So why am I here?”

“That's what I'd like to know. I tried contacting Arcadian through their aggrenet portal, but no one has called me back.”

That's when I realize something is off. If Arcadian hasn't contacted her back, there has to be a reason. “It's probably just a mix up I'm sure,” I say. And check my watch again.

Finally Ms. Doyle gets it. “I don't want to keep you,” she says, “I'm sure you have a busy schedule. I'll continue to investigate this matter on my end and follow up with you at a later time. What would be the best way to reach you?”

“Don't worry about reaching me,” I say. “I'm sure it was just a simple misunderstanding. How about if I explain what happened to Arcadian, and if they have any questions they can contact you directly.”

“That would be satisfactory,” she says and volleys a business card from her trans screen to my thin screen. “And once again, I'm very sorry about this.”

“Me too.”

Ms. Doyle motions for her assistant to walk me back out, but I wave her off. “It's okay, I can find my way out. Good day.”

“Good day.”

I would probably be more curious about the whole thing if I wasn't already so far behind schedule. I told Ms. Doyle I was sure it was just a simple misunderstanding. Actually, I'm sure it wasn't. Is it possible? Yes. Probable? No. Not where Arcadian is concerned. These guys don't mess around. They don't leave anything to chance, and they don't misunderstand anything. There was no glitch. Somebody at TerraAqua wanted me today, right here and right now, to run a cargo. Of that much I am certain.

As if I haven't already seen it enough times—on the trans screen in the lobby, in the elevator coming up, and on the 43rd floor trans screen waiting to come back down—the status monitor on the elevator tells me that the 28th floor of the Wainwright Building is under construction. Which doesn't concern me until the elevator comes to a full stop on the 28th floor.

I check the panel. The only button lit is for the lobby. I hit it again. Nothing. I hit the button for 28 but that one doesn't even light up. It must be locked out.

The doors open.

I expect to see someone from maintenance hitching a ride down, but instead all I see is a floor gutted down to concrete and windows. Saw horses. Spools of cable. Pallets of wallboard. Folding tables set up here and there. All this material, but not a single person in sight. I wait for the doors to close on their own but they don't. I try to force them closed with the button. Nothing. So I step off the elevator onto the floor.

“Hello?”

Still nothing.

I look around. That's when I see the reason why the elevator is stuck. Someone has placed a large nut over the call button and fastened it down with a strip of duct tape.
Strange
, I think. A practical joke, maybe?

Just as I am about to remove it, the door to the stairwell flies open and a man stumbles in. I recognize him immediately. It's the guy from upstairs, the one who was looking at me from his cubicle. Only now his head and hands are smeared with blood. His own by the looks of it. He is almost out of breath, and his legs appear ready to give out like he has just run all the way down from 43. Or more accurately, like he has just been chased down. The look in his eyes is a look I know all too well. This man is being pursued.

I rush over to help him, barely making it in time to catch him by his sport coat as he collapses onto the floor. Straining for breath, he grips my arms like I am life itself.

“You're the data runner,” he exclaims.

“I am.”

“Good,” he coughs. “I'm the reason you're here. I want to hire you.”

“It doesn't work like that. You have to—”

The man grips my arm even tighter as he shoves my sleeve up my elbow. “What is your tag?” he asks.

“I'm the Carrion.”

“Carrion,” he says. He has already pulled out a thin screen. Now he pulls out a SQUID.

“Hey, wait a second.” I try to release his grip and pull away but he is way too quick. Before I realize it, he has already placed the sensor over the chip and has started the magnet pulses. Now it's too late. Yanking off a SQUID mid-transfer could permanently damage the memory cells inside the cortex chip. I have to wait it out.

Finally I feel it. Five quick pulses indicating the completed transfer.

“Okay, now get it out!” I demand, wanting him to take back whatever it is he's just loaded into my wing, but the man grabs my lapels and stares into me with eyes that refuse to blink.

Cold. Hard. Wide. “Just let it all burn,” he says.

“I don't understand.”

“Just let it all burn.” Each breath grows more laborious than the last. “Get this to the Outliers,” he murmurs. “They'll know what to do.”

Outliers
. “You mean out in the squatter settlements?”

“Precisely,” he whispers.

The door to the stairwell is thrown open and two security goons enter. Only these guys aren't wearing suits, they're wearing tactical vests. Full military gear. And if that isn't enough to give it away, the insignia on their vests is. These guys aren't retrievers by trade. They're soldiers.

“Halt!” screams the first as he pulls out a gun.

There is no time to weigh options. Instinct says GO!

The bloody guy in the sport coat still has me in his grip. I remove his hands from my lapels and sprint for the elevator over a second command to halt. Rip the tape off the call button. Dive through the closing doors and turn just in time to see them miss me by a split-second. The elevator moves, but the numbers can't drop fast enough.

I make my way through the lobby. Moving quickly but not so quick as to arouse suspicion. Now I get paranoid. Maybe it's just my imagination, but it seems like the reception desk gets a call from upstairs. No matter, I am already through the revolving door and out on the sidewalk. Now I have to get underground as fast as I can. There are too many relay cameras up here on the streets. Too many eyes. No one can hide up here. The stairs for the nearest station are right there, but in order to meet Dex I have to use a different station six blocks away or I'll never make it in time.

I check my watch. I have no idea what's going on. I don't have to know what's going on. What I have to do is follow my gut. Instinct says MOVE. Keep moving. Even when the cryptic words start playing in an endless loop in my head.

Just let it all burn
.

Whatever it means, I know one thing for sure. Blackburn is after it. That's when I remember what Red Tail said. Blackburn is the one outfit you don't want on your tail.

This could be bad.