Kelly pushed the button for the penthouse floor, the elevator doors slid closed and she and Dunstan ascended while a quaint electronic tune floated above their heads. Kelly stared at the orange glow highlighting the ‘penthouse’ button on the elevator panel, and then after a while stared at nothing at all. She stood in the middle of the elevator, shoulders squared, while Dunstan slouched against the railing on the wall. Kelly rapidly tapped her middle and index fingers against her thigh. Her body felt clammy and cold and there was a tingling sensation in her shoulders. Still she ached. Her scalp still hurt as if that man was still throwing her around by her hair. She still felt the cool sting of the knife slicing her flesh. The pressure of the hilt in her hands. The bite of shattered glass. Someone in the distance calling her name.
“Lieutenant?” Dunstan leaned towards her and Kelly snapped back to reality.
“Sorry?”
“I was asking if you think it was a good idea to leave our weapons in the lobby?”
Kelly didn’t respond right away. She blinked a few times. Laid her hands flat on her thighs. “It was… necessary. I want to send the right message, that we mean what we say about forming an alliance. Julia won’t deal with someone whose plan B is an M9.”
“That’s all well and good, ma’am, but how do we know we can trust the Van Burens to play nice?”
“I’m trusting you. Well, a little. I really don’t think it’ll come to that, but you flagged that order of biometrically locked weapons, right?”
Dunstan nodded. “Right. But that’s one hell of a gamble.”
“Then we better hope it doesn’t come to that.”
The doors pinged open to reveal a smiling woman cradling a computer tablet in her arms. She was dressed professionally, hair tied back, glasses. There was nothing sinister in the way she looked at Kelly and Dunstan, in fact her smile was startlingly innocent.
“I’m miss Van Buren’s personal assistant, if you could please come with me, miss Van Buren will be with you in a moment.”
Kelly followed the assistant to an open rooftop bar, incredibly luxurious, gazing out upon the sprawling valley below, great stretches of desert and jagged outcrops speckled with settlements, it made Kelly feel like she was on top of the world, and that kind of power was intriguing. A red corner lounge and a low glass coffee table filled some of the space on the edge of the balcony. The balcony itself had a pale blue transparent floor, and glass railings on only two sides—the furthest point from the main building dropped off into the gorge far below. The bar was located under a dark gazebo. Kelly took a moment to admire the negative photograph of a rattlesnake on the wall. Somewhere nearby she heard trickling water, and walked around the gazebo to find a pool with another glass floor.
“Exquisite,” Kelly told the assistant.
“She’s not afraid of heights,” Dunstan added.
“Miss Van Buren has excellent taste,” the assistant agreed. “She designed this building herself. It is her architectural masterpiece.”
The assistant spoke about the building for a while. It really was impressive, and it confirmed a suspicion Kelly had that Julia’s ambitions extended beyond the operations of the cult. Kelly made a note of the security cameras mounted around the space – there weren’t many blind spots.
“I admire her tenacity,” Kelly said. “She seems like a capable woman.”
The assistant nodded. “Please, sit.” She gestured to the lounge chairs on the edge of the balcony. “Miss Van Buren will be out shortly.”
Kelly took a seat and gazed at the valley below while Dunstan continued to wander around the bar. Julia would undoubtedly take their positioning as a sign of mistrust, or as a sign of intelligence.
Kelly heard the tapping of Julia’s heels before she stepped around the corner. Like Kelly, Julia had a rigid posture with square shoulders and a professional upkeep. Her short chestnut hair was streaked with ash grey and swept back—it failed to cover the silver implant behind her ear. Kelly noticed right away that Julia’s Neural Interface was different, a different model, perhaps. Julia removed her sunglasses before leaning forward and firmly gripping Kelly’s hand.
“So, you’re the false shepherd that has been causing Anton trouble. Kelly Jade.” She spoke the name as if she were sampling it, and looked Kelly up and down. Scanning. Making note of the cuts and bruises that marred Kelly’s usually beautiful skin. “I suppose his goons did that? What a brute.”
“My associate and I were on our way to see you when we were attacked by unknown assailants,” Kelly said, without breaking eye-contact.
Julia nodded. “An unfortunate coincidence, or a plot by my brother. Things have really gotten out of hand around here.”
“You know who I am,” Kelly replied. “You know why I’m here. You don’t seem worried.”
“Please, I’ve handled far worse than you, dear. My company will be fine. It’s the state that concerns me, and my brother. My father entrusted me to take the lead on the family business when he passed away. I won’t have Anton dragging our name through the mud if this gets out. Reputation is everything, dear. There’s a way to go about handling these things and my brother doesn’t give a damn for any of it. It’s preposterous.”
“I find it hard to believe you’d complain about a problem without proposing a solution, and seeing as you’ve agreed to meet with me, I’d say you’ve made me a part of your plan.”
“Correct, dear.” Julia’s assistant handed her a small cup of tea, and one for Kelly. “You know, I never liked my nephew. He always had poor manners, and Anton never treated him right. But when you have a name as important as mine, blood takes on a certain value. Anton isn’t happy with what you did, and frankly neither am I.”
“I eliminated a threat,” said Kelly sternly. “If you want to get rid of me I’m fine with that, but I came here to do a job and I can’t leave until it’s done. I want to know how the cult are obtaining their information. I want to know how they managed to access top secret CIA documents. How did Anton know who I was the moment I stepped into that church?”
Julia leaned back, an air of smugness coming about her. “To access a computer all it takes is the right piece of code positioned in the right place at the right time. Agent Connors chose you for this mission because you’re old-fashioned, like him, like me. Sometimes the simpler methods are the most effective.”
“Do you condone your brother for what he’s done to this place? What he did to these people?”
“Try not to misinterpret my meaning, dear. Do you really think I’d let him keep doing what he’s doing if I didn’t agree to his philosophy? Mankind is long overdue for an upgrade. Technology evolves and the base human specimen is left behind, unable to change, unable to keep up. What Anton and I have achieved is a society on the brink of utopia, the removal of human error to be replaced with a perfect harmony of mathematical precision. Anton’s invention opened our minds to the voice of god—not the entity that archaic man dreamt up to answer for our petty imperfection, but a machine intelligence capable of guiding those who are worthy towards the next stage in human evolution.”
“And this voice,” Kelly asked carefully, “how do you know it can be trusted? How do you really know what it’s doing to your mind?”
Julia smiled and touched the silver Interface. “Have you noticed that my implant is different from the others? I was among the first of us to have one installed. I remember my life before, so much doubt, so much clutter… and sadness. I knew about Anton’s research, of course, I played a major role in funding and supporting his work. I never knew how the Neural Interface worked but I knew why it had to. Anton told me that I could be the first improved human. He promised that he could make me better and so, for obvious reasons, I was… intrigued. But I was only interested in something that would enhance my cognitive function. I didn’t want a device that would make my decisions for me. I know how these things work, you see. Control the flow of data—”
“And you control everything,” Kelly finished.
“That’s right. I helped Anton test the device. My mind was strong enough to handle the updates and alterations that were needed to perfect the link between mind and machine.” She tapped the side of her head with her middle finger. “This device is revolutionary… and you want to know how it works.”
“Not necessarily,” Kelly replied, again without breaking eye-contact.
“Then what do you want?”
“The data that your cult currently possess is dangerous. Anton has the means to manipulate thousands of innocent people to his will and the US Government will not let that kind of threat go unchecked.”
Julia bowed her head as if she were urging Kelly to make her point.
“Alright.” Kelly clapped her hands on her knees. “Your interface is a means to an end. My associate believes there is a way to access and delete the files on Anton’s device without terminating him.”
“And of all the Neural Interfaces out there you chose mine because the moment Anton catches on to your little scheme he’ll initiate countermeasures to stop you from doing it again. You figured my mind was the most valuable.”
Kelly paused. “I can save your brother.”
“Just by suggesting that, you’ve already underestimated him… again.”
“And what about Cherry.”
Julia’s face changed. The smugness was wiped away.
“What about her?”
“Your daughter is involved in this too. My investigation won’t stop with Anton. Whatever Cherry’s activities are, I will find out eventually. And if not me then someone else. How certain are you that you can protect your daughter? From Anton and the CIA?”
Julia stood up and walked to the edge of the balcony, her heels clicking on the glass floor. Kelly joined her and leaned with her arms on the railing. With the building hanging off such an enormous outcrop, Kelly looked straight down at the gorge below. What would that be? Five hundred feet?
“I never get tired of this view,” said Julia. “Take it in while you can.”
Kelly heard the click of a handgun being cocked and looked up to see Julia holding her at gunpoint. Kelly slowly raised her hands and said, “Now look who has no manners.”
Julia didn’t seem impressed. She pursed her lips. Her hand was steady. Her eyes cold. She had killed before.
“Come on, Julia, just think of the paperwork,” Kelly said.
“Good to know you’re not taking this personally. I’ve done the math. The cost of killing you doesn’t quite outweigh the benefits. Sorry.”
Kelly half-shrugged. “Just business.”
Julia pulled the trigger. Nothing. Kelly let out a relieved breath and looked at Dunstan, standing by the pool with his phone, giving her a thumbs up. Julia grunted and the weapon rattled in her hand as she squeezed the trigger again and again. She hadn’t noticed the safety indicator on the weapon’s grip turn to red.
“You have to hate computers,” said Kelly. “They’re wonderful until they’re not.”
Julia responded by hurling the useless weapon at Kelly which, surprisingly, caught her off guard. It struck her above her right brow and split the skin with a painful white flash. Julia charged forward and Kelly only just noticed the small knife in her hands.
“Hold on!” Kelly yelled, catching Julia’s wrists.
It had barely been a week since her last knife fight. Julia was surprisingly nimble, but untrained.
“Dammit Julia I need you alive!”
Kelly twisted Julia’s wrist, easily removing the knife, and then knocked her back with an elbow strike to the chest. Julia tumbled backwards and Kelly immediate realised her mistake, as Julia tripped and landed on the very edge of the balcony. Kelly dived towards her, trying without hope to catch her hand.
She was too slow.
Julia screamed as she fell into the gorge below.
Though the air in the river gorge became cooler as the sun dipped over the edge of the escarpment high above, the rocks under Kelly’s hands remained warm and dry. Kelly slid down a slope of loose stones. She surfed, ran and jumped from rock to rock; her clothes and her boots were covered in dust and a thin layer of red dirt darkened on her perspiring forehead.
“Lieutenant, could you slow down?” Dunstan called from higher up the slope, as he slowly staggered and stumbled his way down.
In the late afternoon the depth of the river gorge took on a ghostly appearance. The rocks were sharp, toothy and pale, and the coarse blood-red sand turned purple as it was streaked with Neon in the coming night.
Kelly had wondered about that faint glow of neon since she first began the climb not far from the base of Van Buren’s estate. She was surprised to find that she had now stumbled into a shanty town, long deserted but somehow very much alive. On both sides of the base of the gorge, pierced by the tricking river, were huts and platforms, walkways and stairs, all made from corrugated iron and lightly decayed wood. A few automated systems must have stayed on after the town was abandoned. Small bots crawled around like spiders, cleaning, collecting, repairing. There was an eerie mist about the place, sprung to life in the neon glow cast by old repurposed signs that miraculously still worked—thanks to the bots, no doubt.
Kelly’s descent became easier once she was aided by the structures of the town. She peered inside huts to find them completely stripped of their possessions. They were dark and lonely places shot through with blaring pink and blue neon.
Dunstan came up behind Kelly, huffing with the effort of the climb. He gazed about the place in mild confused wonder.
“You ever seen a place like this, Lieutenant?”
“No,” Kelly replied. “I’ve seen shanty towns, but none like this. There’s something about this place.”
Now that she was standing still she realised that she was amongst a dense and encumbering silence. Nothing alive here made a sound, and above the slow drawing of her own breath only the river made any noise, like a small fountain somewhere far away. The sky now burned a vibrant orange that reflected on the running surface of the river beneath her.
“Let’s just find Julia and get out of here,” Kelly said.
At the mention of Julia’s name Dunstan was reluctant to press on, in fact he hung back a little, not wanting to be the first to see what happened to her.
At long last they reached the bottom of the gorge and Kelly’s boots plonked into the river that was only about a foot deep. She glanced left and right, being pretty certain that the balcony from which Julia fell was high above them on their right. She waded in that direction, and her suspicions were confirmed when the water around her turned a cloudy red.
Julia’s broken body lay on a protruding rock not far off. She had landed on her side, a violent contorted death. A pool of blood and brain matter seeped from her cracked skull where her head collided with the rock on impact. A little robotic spider tugged at her sleeve. Kelly had confirmed seven kills and seen more death in her time, but even so this sight made her want to gag.
Why did you do it? She thought with dismay.
Kelly waded up to the gross scene, stopped for a moment, and leaned forward with her hands on her thighs.
“Shit,” she breathed.
The climb down hadn’t been easy and seeing the gruesome reward at the end didn’t make things better.
She heard splashing and breathing as Dunstan came up behind her. He took one look at Julia’s body and his face turned creamy pale.
“Oh!” he cried, quickly turning away with nausea in his voice. “Oh… no…”
“Dunstan, you don’t have to look at it but I need you to tell me what to do here.”
Dunstan found an interesting tree to hold his attention and spoke—keeping his back towards Kelly. “Even if the host is deceased I could still theoretically be able to recover the data from her Neural Interface, but I kind of counted on Julia being cooperative and, you know, alive, during this process. The equipment we’d need is back at headquarters and I don’t see us carrying her body back up that cliff.”
Kelly nodded and sighed quietly. This wasn’t how her day was supposed to go. She pinched her brow and said, “But we don’t actually need Julia, we only have to get the Interface.”
“Which is surgically implanted into her brain,” Dunstan replied. “Again, you’d need a surgical drill or—”
Kelly unsheathed her combat knife and stepped towards the body.
Dunstan turned towards her. “Oh, Kelly no.”
“We came all this way,” she replied, and knelt down in front of Julia. She searched for a good hand-sized rock and promptly got to work. “Okay Dunstan, where am I cutting?”
He hesitated.
“Dunstan!”
“Based on the schematics I researched, the part we need is the solid drive beneath the protective plating and the three auxiliary wires that run about an inch into the temporal lobe.”
Kelly guided the knife uncertainly over Julia’s head.
“What?”
“Just… the shiny part, yes that. As long as you don’t damage that or the three larger wires attached to it, you’ll be fine.”
Kelly exhaled slowly.
“Right…”
Kelly rolled Julia’s limp body onto its back while trying to avoid looking at the face—a pointless task, really. She turned the head so that the Neural Interface was facing up. So too was the bleeding cracked part of the skull. Kelly placed the tip of her knife to the side of the silver device embedded in the skull, then found a better angle, about an inch above, where it would be less likely to take damage when the bone cracked. Kelly dug the knife in until it was steady, gave it a few taps with the rock, and then one large hit. The blade sank in deep and was almost impossible to get out again. Kelly struck it a few more times and used her weight to twist and shimmy the knife around. By now she had copious amounts of blood on her hands and clothes. But she was making progress. With a gruelling crunch Kelly was able to separate a part of the skull to loosen the Neural Interface just a little. Hidden inside the brain matter she was at least able to see the three wires Dunstan had told her to be careful of, as well as a number of hair-thin cables and nodes running in all directions.
Kelly wiped her sweating forehead, oblivious to the bloody smear her hand left behind. She was exhausted. “What about… what about these little wires?” she asked Dunstan.
Even flush with pale neon Dunstan’s face looked green. He dared to glance for one second at what Kelly had done and immediately doubled over and vomited in the bushes behind them. Kelly gave him a moment, and then he hobbled over wiping his mouth on his sleeve. He kept his eyes pointed at his feet.
“We don’t… uh… yeah we don’t need those ones,” he said.
When Kelly removed the main part of the Neural Interface and pulled it away from the skull the thinner wires trailed along after it. “Okay,” Kelly said, and she cut the wires with the serrated part of her knife.
She got up. Hopefully they would never have to talk about this, to anybody, ever again. Kelly even planned on omitting some details to Agent Connors. She looked at the bloody piece of machinery in her hand. So much trouble over a little thing. She washed it in the river, dropped it into Dunstan’s hand, gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder, and began to make her way back up the slope.
“Wait,” said Dunstan. “What about her?”
Kelly turned around and reluctantly looked at the sorry state of Julia Van Burren’s corpse. Such a powerful woman, lying dead at the bottom of a dark river gorge.
“We can’t do anything now,” Kelly said. “We’ll get out of here first. We know where to go, we’ll call Santiago once were in the clear, have him send someone to collect her.”
Kelly tried to find a clean patch of shirt to wipe her face with. What I’d give for a shower right now, she thought.
ns 172.69.59.44da2