Hex (3 page)

•  •  •

When Wraith returned, Kez was leaning against the side of the flitter in the same position as when he had left, watching him with intent hazel eyes.

“Business OK?” he asked as Wraith approached.

“Yeah, I think so,” Wraith replied. “Anyone try to steal the flitter?”

“Not with me here,” Kez told him but felt an unusual pang of guilt as he caught the cred coin he was tossed. “Hey, friend,” he said, as Wraith keyed open the flitter doors, “you got someplace to stay tonight?”

“Not yet.” Wraith looked at the boy in some surprise as he got back into the car, but decided he was hoping for more money.

“I'll show you a place,” Kez offered, “if I can hang with you a while.”

“You will?” Wraith got into the flitter and watched as Kez swung quickly into the passenger seat. He didn't want any additional burdens on this trip and he opened his mouth to refuse when a voice buzzed from his transceiver, too low for Kez to hear.

“Accept the offer, brother. The sooner you find a place, the sooner I can meet you.”

“OK,” Wraith said, in response to both his sister and Kez. “Where to?”

•  •  •

The place Kez directed him to was a shabby flophouse deep within the slum district but not part of gangland. It was a dismal area, most of the buildings derelict. The room Wraith and Kez were given was probably better than most. It possessed three beds, made up with grubby sheets, a rickety table and chairs, and a computer unit with a vidscreen. Its only window was boarded up and a second door led to a small bathroom. Wraith dumped his bag by one of the beds and Kez seated himself on another.

“How come you asked for three beds?” he asked, and Wraith looked at him sharply.

“I'm meeting my sister,” he said shortly.

“You going to call her and tell her where you are?” Kez asked, and Wraith shook his head quickly.

“No need. I have a tracking device so she can find me.” He pulled out a cred card from his jacket and held it out to Kez. “Why don't you go get something for us to eat?” he suggested, hoping to be able to avoid the boy's questions for a while. “Get enough for three.”

“OK.” Kez took the card. “What do you want?”

“Anything.” Wraith shrugged. “No, wait a minute.” He thought for a second. “My sister likes Chinese food.”

“Sure thing.” Kez grinned and was gone. Wraith wondered for a moment if he had been wise to give the boy the card, which had about eight hundred credits on it. But since Kez seemed so eager to hang around with him, he was unlikely to do a flit. He lay back on his bed to wait.

•  •  •

Twenty minutes later there was a knock at the door, and without waiting for an answer, someone swung it open. Wraith sat up and then leaped to his feet as he saw his sister. She was carrying a duffel bag and dressed in black combat gear and a fringed suede jacket. Her black hair was wet and straggled into her dark eyes but she was grinning as she hugged him. Wraith hadn't seen her since they had arrived in England three days ago. They had separated then, nominally in order to attract less attention but in actuality because Raven was used to independence.

Wraith, Raven, and Rachel had been placed in an asylum blockhouse when their parents died. Wraith had been fifteen, Raven nine, and Rachel five. Blockhouses were safe but dreary and unpleasant, and those children unfortunate enough to end up in one dedicated all their energies to escaping. Wraith had achieved this by joining a gang, the Kali, as an enforcer. Shortly afterward Raven had also escaped. Her determination to do so had become a necessity when Raven had discovered that she was a Hex. Mutants who possessed the Hex gene were no more welcome in Denver than anywhere else in the world. Regular sweeps were made of the asylums to detect anyone who showed signs of mutant abilities. If Raven had been discovered she would have been turned over to the government for extermination. At the first opportunity Raven had made herself scarce and entered the ganglands, working as a highly efficient computer hacker.

But neither of them was able to take care of Rachel. According to Raven she had never shown any signs of being a Hex and was therefore safe enough in the asylum for the time being. Later Wraith was relieved when a couple had requested to adopt her. He hadn't imagined that they would abscond with Rachel. Their disappearance had impelled Wraith to take action to find them. If Rachel did turn out to be a Hex she would be in danger and he considered himself responsible for her safety. But it was not until she had been gone for two years that Wraith had had any leads about her whereabouts.

Raven had been uninterested in his search. The fact that her life had been in danger since she was a child had affected her personality. Wraith saw her very rarely as she had become increasingly difficult to communicate with. Her moods ranged from paranoid depression to reckless hyperactivity. It had been so long since they had been close that Wraith could not be sure why Raven had agreed to accompany him to London. But he appreciated her presence. Not only was it useful to have a Hex with him, he also had a deep affection for his sister. The fact that Raven rarely appeared to reciprocate his affection worried and angered him.

Now Raven pulled back from the hug awkwardly and ruffled her hair to cover up her reaction.

“It's raining really heavily out there,” she told him.

“Here,” Wraith offered, throwing her a blanket from his bed. “Use this.”

“Thanks.” Raven wrinkled her nose. “It's not very clean, is it?” She glanced round at the room dismissively.

“The Hilton was booked up,” Wraith replied wryly as Raven started to rough-towel her hair.

“So I see,” she said, her voice muffled by the blanket. “What happened to your friend?”

“I sent him to get something to eat—he was asking too many questions.”

“Oh.” Raven's head re-emerged and she began to comb her hair absently with her fingers.

“We should get rid of him,” Wraith urged. “He's the most mercenary child I've ever met and completely amoral. He'd sell his own soul for a few credits.”

“He's a streetrat, Wraith,” his sister said flatly. “Money's all that stands between them and the abyss. You're mercenary too, you've just become inured to it.” Finishing with her hair she walked over to the wall terminal and started punching buttons. “This is really ancient,” she protested.

“It's operative,” Wraith said shortly, not allowing her to change the subject. “What about the kid?”

“We'll discuss it later,” Raven replied. Then she smiled and pulled out a flat package from her jacket. “Here, this is for you. Your new identity.”

“Thank you.” Wraith took the package and opened it. Inside was a neat stack of cards. Three bank cred cards and an ID card. The ID card had the name Ryan Donahue printed neatly under an image of Wraith; the same was on the three certified cred cards. Wraith examined the ID card carefully. “What else is coded into this?”

“You're an American freelance holovid producer,” Raven told him. “Media people always look like gangers.”

“What about you?” Wraith asked.

“I'm Elizabeth Black, a researcher for a fictional US vidchannel,” she told him. “We can use the IDs together or separately.”

“Clever,” Wraith commented.

“I'm glad you approve,” Raven was saying when they heard footsteps outside the door and a knock.

“Come in,” Wraith called and Kez entered.

It was obviously still raining outside as Kez was soaking wet, but he was carrying two large paper bags, which he held out triumphantly as he came in. Raven swooped on them before Kez had even shut the door. He watched as she unpacked the plastic cartons of Chinese food quickly. She looked older than her computer image and less approachable. But she had the same mocking smile and her black hair fanned out in a silky cloud around her face. She and Wraith were like the positive and negative versions of the same photograph; their features were almost identical but the colors were reversed.

Raven made no mention of their earlier meeting, introducing herself only as Wraith's sister. Wraith seemed unwilling to discuss anything with Kez but Kez's questioning eventually elicited the information from Raven that they were trying to hunt down their younger sister.

“But I'm going to make some contacts while I'm here,” she added, chasing a grain of rice with her chopsticks. “I might come with you the next time you visit the Countess, Wraith.”

“I told her you were a hacker,” Wraith said diffidently. “She might offer you work.”

“That's not a problem.” Raven shrugged. “I could use the credits.”

“Are you going to log on again now?” Wraith asked as Raven got up from the table.

“Later,” she told him. “I've got to get some rest first.” She unlaced her large black army boots and lay down on the bed fully dressed. She was asleep in under a minute and Kez looked at Wraith in surprise.

“She's a heavy sleeper,” he explained. “Don't worry, you won't wake her.” He got up and headed toward the bathroom. “I'm going to take a shower—don't steal anything.”

“Hey!” Kez began, but Wraith had already left. He grimaced at the closed door. Wraith had obviously decided that he wasn't to be trusted without even knowing about his attempt to make off with the flitter and despite the fact that Kez had returned the cred card. Sullenly he pulled a chair in front of the computer unit and idly punched buttons to operate the vidscreen. He could get only a few channels and he flipped through them several times before switching the unit off again. Raven was still out of it and Kez decided to follow her example. He didn't bother to take off his boots, crawling under the covers and wrapping himself tightly in the thin blankets. By the time Wraith returned from the bathroom Kez was already half asleep.

Raven had slept dreamlessly for
two hours when the sound of an alarm going off somewhere outside jerked her awake. Kez and Wraith were still fast asleep, the boy wrapped in a cocoon of blankets, Wraith tossing uneasily on top of his bed. Raven got out of bed and crossed to the computer unit. The alarm had already ceased its wail but since she was awake she might as well take the opportunity to hack in privately. She wasn't solitary by nature, although she knew that was what her brother believed, but she was wary about being observed in the symbiotic connection she had with computers. No one could mistake Raven for an ordinary hacker when she was working for real. She could, if she chose, act like an ordinary user, her fingers flying soundlessly across the keypad to perform the necessary operations. But she found it a tedious and distasteful method. Now she let her hands rest lightly on the keypad and closed her eyes as her consciousness entered the computer.

This was where Raven was now, speeding down data pathways in a microsecond. No system was closed to her and she extended tendrils of her consciousness in all directions, searching always for a mention of Rachel. Her perception of the net was not something she could describe, the way the circuitry resolved itself in her mind into shapes and colors, tastes, textures, sounds, and smells. Every sense was wrapped up in the experience so that she could not explain how she knew something, only that she knew it. That was how she realized something was different when she ran into something new at the end of a data pathway.

Instantly all her tendrils of consciousness were concentrated in one place, wrapping around the strangeness to identify it. Incredibly there was resistance and Raven knew suddenly with a flash of insight that this was more than a program. It was another personality in the net. An amateur undoubtedly. The other was suffused with fear and in its disorientation betrayed its inexperience.

> relax <
Raven commanded, whether in words or thoughts she didn't know, holding the stranger firmly in place.
> who/what are you? <
She was aware of another struggle to be free and added impatiently:
> i am not part of the security services or the cps. if i were, could i do/ feel/be this? <

> let me go! <
the other pleaded, fluttering tendrils of itself in all directions.

> your name? <
Raven ordered, clamping down. The other could resist no more than the locked programs that swung open at Raven's approach.

> ali <
responded the other and Raven was almost overwhelmed with a flood of images that the name had set free. A sixteen-year-old schoolgirl from somewhere far above in the shielded security complexes of the rich. This was her second foray into the net and she was terrified to have been caught. Raven laughed. The girl was a novice. In a few microseconds she had disgorged enough information for Raven to trace her identity and current location while Raven herself had revealed nothing. The stranger could do virtually nothing in the net, but however inept her bunglings, she would not be caught while within the circuitry. It was more likely that she would betray herself in the real world. In a flash Raven transmitted that information to the girl, still giving away nothing about her own identity. Disengaging, Raven prepared to let herself be swept back into the net.

> wait! <
Ali pleaded. Her immediate panic was dulled by the information Raven had communicated while its substance deeply frightened her.
> you must wait—please wait—don't leave me! <

> why? <
Raven demanded, already bored by the exchange and considering she had done enough for the unknown Hex.

> you have to stay/help me/stop the cps catching me. <

> (?) <
Raven was annoyed now, her responses becoming more basic.

> because you're like me. we (you/me) are the same. <

> each of us is on our own <
Raven replied.
> this conversation is terminated. <
And she was gone, leaving nothing of her essence behind with which the stranger could trace her. But now she knew indisputably where to find the girl, should she want to do so. Ali's signature would be imprinted on her eidetic computerized memory until she chose to expunge it.