Rebecca would close her eyes and night and see blood layered within segments of computer code. Sometimes code was the only thing that made sense to her anymore. After long nights at home she would only remember the caffeine and the blue glow of her computer. Learning. Creating. Working on her own malicious projects. And the collection of unregistered tech she had recovered from the shop and dragged all the way to Mika’s. She destroyed everything else, hastily, frantically, anything that would lead the police to White Rabbit. She laid the assemblage of tech, the hardware remains of White Rabbit, down in an empty car park. She burned it all.
It must have been the run-in with the hitman that brought back the nightmares, and thus the reason why she barely slept that night. Now she rose from her bed as the city sky outside faded into a soft purple. She got dressed, packed some things and made her way to the bus stop.
Bec spent the bus ride staring at her phone. She read a news article about bands of protestors rising up in countries across the globe demanding new restrictions to be placed on the actions of organisations like the United Nations. For a lot of people, the crackdown on unregistered tech and the limited access of info tech to the general public was one step too far towards unethical methods of control, while governments and corporations poured more and more interest in surveillance and data collection. Of course, the news didn’t mention any of that: they pegged the protestors as a nationalist-anarchy group. Rebecca had seen this kind of thing before, mostly in spray tags around the city and recently published sci-fi novels. Fear of the World Government.
Once she stepped off the bus, she followed her GPS to the location where Officer Taylor had agreed to meet; a nicer part of the city, close to the dreaded Nexus store Bec had once worked at for a while before she resigned and left them with a little parting gift.
Bec reached her destination and found a seat outside a restaurant. She caught a whiff of seafood. The happy couple nearby shared a platter of fried squid and salad. A hologram of a young street busker strummed a pretty tune; though he’d only recorded five songs, they played over and over on a loop, and the people passing by never noticed. Bec went inside and ordered a cappuccino while she waited. Cutlery. The sound of plates and forks and glasses clanging against each other. An undertone of calm conversation.
‘Rebecca.’
Officer Taylor approached and sat across from her.
‘Hey, Harrison.’
Taylor noticed the use of his first name, his eyes remarked at it, but he didn’t say anything.
‘How you holding up?’ he said.
Bec raised her eyebrows and said, ‘After that shit-show at the bar the other day? Just another day at the office, isn’t it?’
Taylor grinned. ‘Good to see it’s not slowing you down. Any new orders from Kelly?’
‘Now that we have the access key, she wants me back soon, but there’s still something I have to do.’ She leaned forward. ‘I think I know a way to find out who purchased the server. I met him once, I think, but not really – it was in a dark server. When I was working at Pegasus for the Syndicate, they introduced me to him, and he hired me to help build his AI.’
‘But his face was censored,’ said Taylor.
‘And his voice.’
‘If you’re thinking what I think you are,’ Taylor pointed out, ‘it won’t work. Recovering data from VR sessions is tricky enough as it is, you know that, but even so, the data was destroyed when Pegasus blew up.’
‘I know,’ said Bec. ‘That’s not exactly what I was thinking. I have a plan. I’ll have to reach out to an old friend. I want you to contact Kelly and tell her I should be finished for her by tomorrow.’
Everything moved so quickly now, plans were accelerating, and the desire to find Nexus Rogue forced Rebecca to always move forwards. She gulped down the last of her cappuccino and stood up, said goodbye to Taylor and left the restaurant.
Rebecca stepped out the car and looked around, perhaps to check that there were no NR or Syndicate agents around, but also to catch a glimpse of the building where Pegasus once stood. The lightshow and the holograms projected against the silver towers above had the mesmerising effect of being in a colossal glowing forest. The artificial night sky was constantly changing, from a dancing woman to an advertisement for vodka, to some funky-looking strobe lights. Bec strolled past a classic neon ‘GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!’ sign and the dazzling silhouettes of women, and men, dancing promiscuously.
A familiar side-alley led Rebecca to a stairway going underground, beneath the streets. She came to a metal door with a sliding hatch and knocked on it, a particular rhythm. She waited. The hatch opened and a pair of tired blue eyes stared at her. Bec smiled. The hatched slid shut and the door opened. Mikah cried ‘Rebecca!’ and hugged her.
The single large room inside looked very much like a laboratory. Wires snaked along the floor and walls, connecting to various monitors and other devices that, to Rebecca, looked like advanced VR decks.
Memory tech—Bec’s reason for being here.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ said Mikah, storming over to his desk and picking up his coffee mug. A scrawny man, Mikah had a narrow face, intelligent features, and a kindness that only Bec and one other truly knew about.
‘I uh… well I can’t actually answer that,’ Bec replied, and then quickly said, ‘I need you to trust me.’
Mikah gave her a look that said, ‘what have you gotten yourself into?’ but he didn’t say anything, simply nodded.
‘We’re still friends, right?’ Bec asked cautiously, she hadn’t seen or spoken to him in months, after all.
‘Is that why you came here?’ Mikah sipped his coffee. ‘I mean, yeah, of course we’re still friends. Why?’
‘Need some help. Something only you can do.’ She glanced at the memory deck. ‘Listen, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I’d appreciate it if you kept this secret, especially from certain… organisations.’
Mikah shook his head and sighed, ‘Ah shit. What do you need?’
‘Access, to a memory.’
He squinted, curious.
‘Who’s?’
‘Mine.’ Bec walked over and touched the memory deck. ‘Say I met someone in a dark server and their identity was censored, could you unscramble the data from a memory?’
‘Yeah,’ Mika said reluctantly, ‘but a dark server, Bec? Whoever it is you’re better off not knowing—’
Bec reached out and grabbed his hand, his fingers were soft.
‘Please, Mikah.’
His gaze moved past her and settled on the memory deck. ‘Alright,’ he said, ‘give me some time. I’ll set you up.’
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