Inescapable (26 page)

‘Yes. He
did.’

‘I was not,
Detective. I do not believe in demons. Though, if I did, I might
suggest that one had come to me to persuade me to murder my
clients. It was… It was inside my head. I couldn’t get away from
it.’

‘No escape,’
Fox said.

‘No. None for
them and none for me.’

1
^st
May.

Fox sat on the edge of
the security desk and watched as Ivers walked in followed by a pair
of NAPA uniforms. The inspector did not look especially pleased
with the situation, and she was not meeting Fox’s eyes.

‘He’s in the
holding cell,’ Fox said. ‘We’ll be sending over all the gathered
evidence in the morning. It’s basically open and shut. He’s quite
happy to confess to all five murders and the attempt on Miss
Tailor.’

Ivers lifted
her eyes. ‘They’ll press to get him on the other homicides.’

‘If that goes
to trial, and they push it too hard, he’ll walk on all of them.
There’s no way you can make Doran’s homicides stick to Deedle.’ Fox
lifted a hand and stabbed a finger toward Ivers. ‘And
you
know that. If I’m right about
why
he did it, we’ll probably
have another one along for you to try your luck on.’

‘What?’

‘Deedle says
the “voice” that was pushing him to kill left him right about when
you tried to take him in his apartment. You tipped it off that
Deedle was about to get caught and it moved on. It’ll find itself a
new host and start whispering things to that one.’ Fox nodded her
head toward the back. ‘He’s in the holding cell. Get him out of
here and into custody. It’s your collar.’

‘Thanks,’ Ivers
said as she waved the uniforms forward.

‘As it
currently stands, I can’t detain someone for a crime, Inspector. If
I could, I’d be locking this bastard up myself.’ Getting to her
feet, Fox walked past Ivers and out of the office. She needed to
sleep, and hoped she would not be dreaming tonight.

New York Metro, 1
^st
May
2060.

‘If you don’t mind me
saying, you look like shit.’ Alice Vaughn did not look like shit
dressed only in one of Sam’s shirts, which was too large for her
and therefore did that amazing trick of looking really sexy despite
being all wrong. ‘Why aren’t you in bed, asleep?’

Fox peered at
her for a second. ‘Next stop. I was looking for you.’

Vaughn’s cheeks
coloured a little. ‘A-and you came looking for me in Sam’s
apartment?’

‘Uh-huh. Let
the rest of the board know we nailed the serial killer, would you?
I’ll do a full report when I can think, but tell Jackson he had a
LANGrove-Six implant.’ She turned, spying Sam pouring more coffee
into his mug. ‘You don’t look like you got much sleep either.’

‘More than
you,’ Sam replied. His lips curled. ‘Redheads…’

‘Oh, I know.’
Fox started for the door. ‘Especially the quiet ones.’

Behind her,
Vaughn’s cheeks turned scarlet.

2
^nd
May.

Even with the
application of chemicals to adjust her sleep rhythm, Fox was up
early on the Sunday morning. She wandered to the window and cleared
it, looking out at the construction work on the barrier. It was
early, but it was May and the sun was up. She could see cyberframes
at work on the site, huge, multi-limbed construction robots that
clung to the structure like insects. Some would be run by
infomorphs, others by humans with remote connections. The work
never stopped on the barrier. There was a vague possibility that
some of the machines had the optics to see her standing naked in
her window, but she had never once heard a cyberframe
wolf-whistle.

‘How’s the
world doing this morning, Kit?’ Fox asked as she turned and padded
back across the room.

‘The world is
much the same as usual. A number of IB channels are mentioning the
North Atlantic storm season, which could kick off any time this
month, but there are no indications that it will be especially
serious this year. News feeds of the NAPA press conference on the
arrest of Mister Deedle are in storage if you wish to see them.
Inspector Ivers did credit you and Palladium “for their help” in
the capture.’

‘I doubt her
captain would have let her admit we did all the work, even if she
would be willing to admit it.’

‘I do have a
couple of messages waiting, one of which you will not like.’

‘Good news
first.’

‘Mister Martins
notified me that a vulnerability has been identified in the
LANGrove-Six communications system. He would like you to meet with
him to discuss a course of action.’

Fox stepped
into the shower, which was already running and at exactly the
temperature she wanted. ‘Arrange an appointment as required. I have
no problem going over there today if he wants to meet quickly.’

‘I will make
the arrangements. Wallace Deedle was found dead in his cell
yesterday evening.’

Fox’s reaction
was not quite as annoyed as Kit had expected. ‘Suicide?’

‘The report I
have states that he slit his wrists using a dismantled electric
toothbrush.’

‘Inventive. I
don’t suppose they’d managed to do a proper psychoanalysis on him
before then?’

‘I can check,
but I believe such an analysis would have been scheduled for
tomorrow. You were expecting this?’

‘Not expecting,
no. I’m not terribly surprised. Someone put effort into making
Doran into a one-off copycat. With Deedle dead, they can quietly
sweep all the murders under the carpet and it stops people asking
questions about why Deedle
and
Doran are saying that they
had voices in their heads. This way, it’s just Deedle knowing what
Doran claimed and going for an insanity plea.’

‘You believe
someone in NAPA is covering this up?’

‘I think
Robbard in IA is covering it up, but it’s not just him, and he’s
not doing it for his own purposes.’

‘More
conspiracies?’

Fox gave a
little shrug and reached for the shampoo. ‘This is why I hate
politics.’

~~~

‘There is a
vulnerability in the drivers and hardware of the LANVisor’s
communications system,’ Jackson said, waving his hand at the wall
where a lot of text was scrolling. He had locked his office down
into high-security mode when Fox had entered, apparently wanting to
be sure no one outside heard about it. He had a higher opinion of
the UNTPP’s security than she did or he would have assumed a leak
from there and not bothered. ‘I won’t go into excessive, boring
detail, but there is a truly classic buffer overflow condition
which can result in corrupted memory, access violation, and a
failure into an unprotected state which can be exploited if you
know it’s there.’

‘So, you send
the right data, the implant’s comms trip out, and when they come
back up, they aren’t in the right state?’ Fox asked.

Jackson nodded.
‘It takes three hundred and fifty-two milliseconds for the watchdog
processes to notice the fault and correct it, but that’s long
enough for something fast to penetrate the system with full
access.’

‘So, UNTPP
contacts LANGrove and plugs the hole?’

‘Actually, they
suggested an alternative, rather more interesting option.’

Fox raised an
eyebrow. ‘My former colleagues have developed an imagination?’

‘They are
concerned over the exploitation of this hack. I believe it is a
genuine accident, a bug, but they think it may have been
deliberately engineered in. I have to admit that it seems like
someone or something has discovered this and decided to exploit it.
They want MarTech to write a virus which will actually
exploit
the vulnerability, allowing us to put software in
place which will watch for the hack, block it, and report the
source.’

‘Huh… Do it.
Personally I don’t think they can keep this a secret long enough to
catch whoever arranged it, but it’ll catch the thing doing the
killing. Next time anyway.’

‘Next
time?’

‘It moved on
before we captured Deedle, Jackson. I think it’s already got a new
host. I have
no
idea how to catch the thing if we can figure
out where it’s gone, but I don’t think we even get a chance until
it hops to the next victim.’

Jackson
frowned. ‘I was planning to do a little more testing on this, but
the special features might be useful…’ He was already wandering
across the room to a desk.

‘You’re being
obscure, Jackson.’

‘Sorry.’
Opening a drawer, he pulled out what looked a lot like the gun case
he had given her her pistol in. Turning it, he walked over and
opened it, and she found herself looking at another pistol. The
design was similar, but a little more compact and blocky. There
were a couple of magazines in the case along with a number of
different bullets packed into foam slots. They looked to be around
ten millimetres, but they also looked like even smaller than usual
micromissiles. ‘This is distinctly experimental. An electromagnetic
micromissile launcher. It uses a high-impulse, railgun-style
ejection mechanism which means that you can fire it at short range
just like a ten-millimetre pistol. At longer range, say ten metres
or more, you can initiate the infrared homing system and they’re
self-guiding.’

‘You made
ten-mil, homing micromissiles?!’

‘With multiple
warhead options. You don’t get the rate of fire with this that you
get with the other pistol, so I’ve made flechette rounds. There are
less-than-lethal, low-speed solid slugs, high-explosive, shaped
charge warheads, and high-voltage discharge heads. And’ – reaching
out he tapped one of the slugs – ‘these have fairly powerful radio
jammers in them. Hit a target with that and you can disrupt all
communications in a fifteen- to eighteen-metre sphere for around
about thirty minutes.’

‘If I could
nail the next victim with one of those, it wouldn’t be able to
connect to the local net to upload itself elsewhere.’

Jackson smiled.
‘You should probably take some time to familiarise yourself with
it. And I’d appreciate your thoughts on the utility of the
piece.’

Fox smiled
back, taking the case out of his arms. ‘More product testing?’

‘You know you
love it.’

~~~

Kit was looking
disturbed when Fox got back to her apartment. The reason for that
became quite obvious, quite quickly. ‘I have more data from
“thought and memory,”’ the AI stated as soon as Fox walked in.
‘There is a substantial amount of it, I have no idea what it is,
and it just appeared. I don’t know how it got into my file
store.’

Fox made her
way to the coffee machine, her lips pursed. ‘Okay, send the data to
Palladium for analysis. They can get a tech in to examine it. I’m
going to go have a word with Vali.
You
are not coming in
this time.’

‘You don’t have
to protect me, Fox. I–’

‘I
am
going to protect you. You’re my PA and… And I consider you a friend
even if I haven’t known you for a particularly long time. If Vali
is doing this, I want to know how, and I want him to stop sneaking
data into your system. It’s upsetting you. He probably doesn’t even
realise that, but I’m going to give him an earful, and you don’t
need to be there for that.’

Kit looked like
she might argue, but she just said, ‘Very well. If he does know how
disconcerting this is and is doing it anyway, I don’t believe I’ll
want to talk to him again anyway.’

Fox nodded as
she walked over to Kit’s server and began stretching a lead out
from it to the sofa. The end of the lead had an induction contact
on it which would connect up to the similar one inside Fox’s palm
and provide the high-speed link needed for full VR. ‘And I’d like
you to monitor the data link. If it starts to look odd, drop me
out, no delay, no questions asked. I’ll deal with the disconnect
shock as and when.’

Kit’s eyes
widened. ‘You think he might attempt to hack your implant along the
VR connection?’

Fox sat down,
drained her coffee cup, and then sat back with the induction lead
in her hand. ‘No, but better safe than sorry.’

Vali’s Homestead,
Niflhel.

Fox waited for the
lakeside to appear around her and the young man to walk down from
the farmhouse before she spoke, even though she had no doubt he
would have heard her before then. ‘You have some explaining to
do.’

‘Concerning?’
There was a smile on his lips, but his eyes were grim. He knew.

‘Thought and
memory. It’s not an especially subtle hint, Vali, son of Odin.’

He frowned,
turned about, and waved for her to follow. ‘Perhaps not. Do you
plan to pursue me over the data capture?’

‘Not my
job.’

‘Ah.’

‘Unless you
start hacking into MarTech. Then I’d have to do something. The main
issue I have currently is that you’re hacking into Kit’s server to
plant the data.’

His frown
deepened as he went to pour cups of mead. Fox sat at the table, not
intending to take even a sip. ‘I thought it the best way to provide
the information anonymously.’

‘Shouldn’t have
signed it then. She likes you and you’re… Huh, I mean it’s a little
like what that bastard Sandoval did to me. He drugged me to make it
easier to get me into bed, took away my ability to choose. You’re
altering Kit’s memory, intruding into her frame, her body, without
permission.’

Vali sat down
with something of a thump. ‘I… hadn’t considered… I
really
should have. There’s no excuse.’ He was avoiding her eyes and his
fingers fidgeted, twisting the cup they held.

‘No, there’s no
excuse, but it’s up to her how she wants to react and the fact that
you didn’t do it with foreknowledge may count in your favour.
I
think it shouldn’t, but I also think it’s not an obvious
form of abuse. There’s no legal issue aside from the unauthorised
access. AIs can have their memories altered. It’s… normal operating
procedure.’