Samantha saw it happen
and was greatly amused. “Why don’t you just go and talk to him? You
haven’t spoken more than three words to each other since you got
back.”
Jen shrugged, not
understanding it herself. It didn’t seem appropriate to gripe ‘he
started it’.
“
Go on. You
know you want to.” Samantha knew she could cajole Jen into action;
she knew her vulnerabilities. “What’ve you got to lose?”
How about our
freedom?
She wasn’t willing to risk such
high stakes.
But then,
she thought,
he’s had the chance to
take that from us already.
“Okay.”
“
You want the
usual outlet?”
“
What do you
think?” she replied rhetorically. They were referring to a
predetermined signal Jen would give if she wanted Samantha to save
her from the conversation. When – if – it came, Samantha would
rescue
her by
offering something benign such as coffee or biscuits and steer
the conversation back into safe waters. Their signal was a sneeze
since they could both fake authentic-sounding sneezes at
will.
She took a
deep breath, steadied herself, and preparing for what she thought
may turn into a battle. With a precisely timed stroll, she cornered
Dan as far as possible away from Cookie.
Not that Cookie would
bother
eavesdropping
.
He
was engrossed in his hack, trying to remain undetected behind
UniForce lines.
“
I wanted to
thank you,” Jen started uneasily.
“
You’ve
already done that, remember?” Dan replied, holding her gaze until
she looked away again.
It surprised him when she
rallied her nerve and looked back into his eyes, and she surprised
him more by holding his gaze for the remainder of the conversation.
“I meant, thank you for helping us.”
Dan smiled cynically.
“You should save that until I’ve actually done
something.”
“
Okay, can I
thank you for
trying
to help us then?”
“
You’re
welcome.” Dan’s ensuing smile eased the tension and Jen started to
relax, just a fraction.
“
I noticed
your enthusiasm for accessing the UniForce network.” It sounded
like an accusation, though that was not how she intended it. “What
do you expect to find?”
Dan carefully guarded his
reply, saying, “You asked me whether a company has ever fucked me
over.”
“
Yes, I
remember.”
“
Well the
biggest fuck-over of all was from UniForce, and if he” – he pointed
at Cookie – “can get me inside their network, I think I can find
the proof I would need to correct it.”
Jen nodded,
pensively.
“
Crippling
Echelon won’t do you any good you know.”
It was the most
unexpected thing she could have heard. “What? Why do you say
that?”
“
Don’t you
see?” Dan sighed heavily. He felt more exhausted than ever in the
presence of such youthful innocence. “Okay, so imagine you breach
UniForce’s network. Then assume Cookie finds a way to pull the plug
on Echelon. Both are tall orders, but for the sake of argument,
we’ll presume he can achieve the impossible. Then-”
“
I’d prefer
improbable,” Jen snapped. “
Nothing’s
impossible. Impossible is a
word people use until someone else does what they can’t
imagine.”
Dan blinked at
her. “Cute. Okay,
improbable,
better?”
She nodded.
“
So Echelon’s
down and you can send messages without UniForce listening. The
problem is – nobody else will be listening either. Look outside,
Jen. Look around you… people are happy. People haven’t been this
happy for decades. I don’t think they
want
to return to the chaos of times
past.”
His logic was an affront
to everything she believed and brought the bile to the back of her
throat. “That’s crap. You’re the one who should open your eyes and
take a look around. People aren’t happy, they’re asleep. They’re
hypnotised into following exactly what the companies want. We’re
like a race of robots marching in step. And do you know what
happens when someone misses a beat? UniForce drags them away from
this army-of-the-damned and flogs them to death as an example to
keep the others firmly under control.”
He laughed. “Do you
really believe this is all part of some diabolical scheme to beat
humanity into submission?”
She held his gaze despite
her mounting need to look away. “Yes.”
“
Do you
honestly believe things would be better with the return of
activism? Do you really think it would be good to ‘wake’ these
people as you put it?”
“
You missed
the point. That’s not what we’re about. We want a world where
people are free to choose. At the moment we’re not.”
And that
struck a chord inside Dan unlike any of her other arguments. It
planted a seed that had the potential to germinate and flourish
into a tree that might one day bear fruit of its own. He wasn’t
sure how to balance the conflicting points of view and he envied
Jen’s resoluteness. She knew exactly what she stood for and had the
courage to do something about it.
Am I
free?
The silence stretched heavily on while
he thought about it.
No, not free. I’m
free to do whatever I want within the system, but the system itself
is restrictive.
Then a voice came to battle
for the doctrine of society.
But rules are
the platform of civilization. Without them, we have chaos. This set
of rules permits peace, which is especially important with the
planet so overcrowded.
Dan couldn’t draw a
conclusion to the debate raging in his mind. Not tonight. Possibly
never. And that made him unpredictable. Capable of digesting both
sides of the argument, he could act on behalf of either the ruling
corporations
or the downtrodden
protestors.
But the
quandary left one very important question begging:
Am I really doing society a favour as a bounty
hunter?
His inner flame of hatred burned and
he resented whatever spiteful force kept placing him in these
situations.
Or am I just a prop for
corrupt companies?
Jen and her band of
wishful warriors, classified as activists – as terrorists! – were
fighting oppression. They aspired to free the world of…
Of what?
Dan didn’t know
anymore. He was too confused to arrange his thoughts into a
coherent stream. But then, he didn’t have to. His motivation in the
short term was simple –
there was no need
for Jen to die by the Raven’s hand, so for now he
would
do his best to keep her
alive.
Jen’s thoughts
were tumultuous too, though for vastly different reasons. They
culminated into the question, “So if you believe what you’re
saying
,
why are you
here? Why not turn me over to UniForce?”
“
Not
everything they do is right,” he said, gracing her with a chagrined
smile. “I like you,” – which was the truth, though he wasn’t going
to tell her why – “and I don’t want to see you incarcerated for
what you’re doing. You believe something strongly enough to risk
your freedom and even your life fighting for it – regardless of how
slim your chances may be. I admire that, it reminds me of… someone
I used to know.”
Jen saw the hurt that
underpinned his words but decided it was private and didn’t want to
pry. She watched the stream of moonlight, admitted to the room by a
crack in the drawn curtains, play across his face. It was like a
finger from the outside world intruding on their private
domain.
Dan finally
lowered his eyes, no longer capable of holding her gaze. And Jen
shivered. Forcing herself to look at him had consumed much of her
energy and she felt exhausted, drained. She took three casual steps
to peek outside and looked across the sleepy Tweed, out toward the
heads. It was breathtakingly pretty, bathed in silvery light. A
whimsical smile tugged at her lips when she realised she’d been
chatting with a handsome man by moonlight.
How often have I dreamed of that?
Of
course, she’d imagined a slightly different conversation, but her
dream
had
come
true. It made her wonder whether her other dreams would also come
true, and if so, what unintended twists they might take.
“
He’s out
there, isn’t he?” Jen asked tiredly, her voice hoarse.
“
I think so.
It would surprise me if he wasn’t. He’s probably watching the
apartment even now.” He touched his Colt for reassurance, gratified
when his fingers brushed the eerily cold stock.
“
So what did
you have in mind? For our protection I mean.” A puff of moist air
escaped with her words, fogging the glass and obscuring her view.
She turned back to Dan. Ready for another duel of wills, she
was
surprised to find him staring at the
floor.
“
There are two
possibilities,” Dan admitted uneasily. He wasn’t yet convinced
either would work. “My original idea was to move you all, take up
new identities, split with your current life and recommend you
don’t do anything outrageous – nothing to get you back on the
corporate hit list. I know it can be done; it’s not even that
difficult. The hardest part is never looking back.” He shrugged
nonchalantly and added, “Of course Samantha and Cookie would have
to agree… unless they want to stay here. But I suspect it won’t be
long before they’re on a bounty hunter’s list
too.
”
Jen paled and
thought,
At least it’s preferable to death
and prison
. “What’s the other
idea?”
“
If Cookie
really can get us into the UniForce network, we might be able to
find the bounty hunter records. If we can do
that
,
we
can
set your status as
apprehended. Hopefully the Raven will lose interest at that point
and you’ll slip through the cracks,
at
least
until someone notices the
disparity.”
A tiny glimmer of hope
sparkled in Jen’s eyes and she looked to where Cookie was working
with renewed incentive.
A twitch
irritated the corner of
Cookie’s
eye and he rubbed it with the
heel of his palm. His eyes were darting across the monitor,
completely unaware of the
sweat
build
ing
up on his brow. His mind was
racing, as if he’d consumed five times his personal limit of
caffeine
.
And that
wasn’t an achievement to scoff at
. Cookie’s
normal daily intake of the drug was enough to corrode a
rookie
coffee-drinker’s
stomach lining. He was desperate to evade the spotlight of
detection. Three separate versions of his detection algorithm were
crawling spider-like through the network to warn him of everything
the system administrator did.
Damn he’s
fast.
Cookie’s knuckles were starting to
ache, the way they did when he failed to take his regulatory
breaks, scheduled at predetermined intervals. His RSI was
officially
cured,
praise going to a Xantex prescription
stuffed
in his top drawer. But he
didn’t have time to take it now and the tendons pulling his fingers
were swollen and throbbing all the way to his elbows.
This must be why people get
implants.
It was at times like
these
that temptation
reared its ugly head.
He was
working
simultaneously on
three separate and equally vital problems. One
application was busy backfilling a punctured file, one of the files
he’d used to seed his first entry into the network. Another was in
the final states of repairing
a
checksum. And he was using a third to penetrate
the final bulwark of the UniForce net. A warning buzzed on his
speakers and he shattered protocol by turning off his chat
software, disconnecting himself from the distracting world of
cyber-chatting. A friend in Peru would be pissed when he came back
online, but if that were the worst he suffered, he’d consider
himself lucky.
Another alarm
flashed on his screen. The
UniForce
system administrator was close, sniffing at all
the customary places that Cookie might have used to gain access.
He’d systematically locked down every weak point on the UG7-rated
network.
He knows his
stuff,
Cookie thought, irritably blinking
the stinging sweat from his eyes.
Where’s
Samantha?
He didn’t have time to turn his
head and chastised himself for the lapse in concentration as he
redoubled his efforts to assault the bulwark.
I’ve worked too hard to have some arsehole fuck me
now.
With a flutter of
excitement, he found a weakened node and slipped his tiny program
into the core of the host file. Then he socketed the file and
recalculated the checksum so that his dastardly opponent, as Cookie
now thought of the UniForce system administrator, wouldn’t suspect
that he’d altered it. There was a tiny window of opportunity when
his entire campaign was vulnerable to detection but a few seconds
later the checksum was in place and he’d altered the ‘modified
date’ to erase all evidence of his tampering.