NLI-10

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NLI-10

By

Lee Isserow

Copyright © 2016 Lee Isserow
All rights reserved.

The Plaza Hotel was surrounded by a hum of activity as celebrities and politicians sauntered along the red carpet. At either side, barriers held back lesser men, women and children, who were occasionally greeted by those they adored on their way into the gala. A light rain whisked by a gentle breeze was falling on to the night streets, slowly soaking into the excitable crowd's summer clothes, but not bothering the affluent, who were chased down their private crimson path by assistants holding oversized golf umbrellas above them, as if a single drop of water might ruin their quaffed hair and bespoke clothing.

The woman watched from high up in the building across the street, hiding back from the light gleaming through the windows, curtains masking her presence. For this mission the Network had adopted the names of revolutionary leaders, for what they were intending was in some ways a revolution. The use of code names was decided after they had scrubbed their true identities from the NeuralNet. They'd never say their names – real or otherwise – out loud, but on the slight chance the Network might be breached or bridged, they needed to ensure that what might be left of their real identities could not be tracked back from an incursion. The draw was random, but felt rigged when the slight brunette at the window was given the moniker
Marx
, the father of The Communist Manifesto, a prophet of revolt. She didn't like that she was seen as the forbearer of the revolution, and as she started to dwell on it, turned off the anxiety that was bubbling in the back of her mind.

She needed to be in the moment, without distraction from emotion, and be certain her target was on schedule. Marx had acquired the list of staggered arrival times in advance, but didn't trust that the Secretary Of State wouldn't find an excuse not to show. It was a charity event after all, and he had more important things to do, with more important people.  She kept a careful eye from the window as car after car pulled up, rain spattering off their roofs like hundreds of tiny depth charges, waiting patiently for a government vehicle to arrive.

She sipped at a cardboard cup of coffee that had long since gone cold. Marx didn't drink coffee for the caffeine, she just needed something to keep her hands busy whilst she waited. Her adenosine receptors were set to manual, blood vessels dilated, oxygenation levels high, already prepared for the task she had ahead of her. Two minutes until he was due. She had to get ready. 

Delving into operational controls, she tugged on the neural circuits that got her pituitary turning over, secreting hormones that would soon have adrenaline pumping. They had never tried anything this public before, and it could easily go wrong before she even stepped into the hotel. But she had to prove to herself and the Network that they could get access to high profile targets, get the information that would take them further and deeper into the bowels of the labyrinth, and hopefully come out the other side victorious.

Two minutes came and went. No sign of the car. She knocked back the last of the coffee and threw it into a recycling box by a desk, glancing around at the office she had broken in to. Marx had never worked in a place like this, a white-walled box, generic landscape prints screwed into frames that were in turn screwed in to the thin plasterboard separating one worker from another. She wondered if she'd ever live a normal life again, or if this was how it would be for the rest of her presumably truncated life. Whispers over the top of her thought stream brought her back to the matter at hand, a download of information from the Network. There had been traffic on the Long Island Expressway. He was running late, but in moments he'd arrive. She needed to see him for herself, needed to be certain he was there before she walked into the lion's den.

Another minute passed, and finally his car pulled up to the bottom of the red carpet. She saw wisps of grey hair emerge just before a golf umbrella came in to rescue him from the drizzle, obscuring her view in the process. Marx waited until he walked down the red carpet and the umbrella was taken away for the next guest, waited for him to turn and face the crowd, to smile and wave at an indifferent public. FaceRecog confirmed it was him. It was time to act.

She was out the office and down the stairs before the elevator would have made it up to her perch on the twentieth floor. Her long dark hair flowed through the air like a squirrel's tail as her skeletal frame leapt four steps at a time, jumping over banisters to skip corners. Bursting out on to the street she instantly activated a calm, steady pace, instructing her body to imitate a gait that wouldn't be read as suspicious by the myriad intelligent A-Eye cameras at every corner, watching every person, every face, every movement. The NeuralNet was trained to spy anything that seemed out of the ordinary, that could be determined as hostile in any way.

She knew this, because she knew them, and until The Network had scrubbed their Recog profiles, it knew her too. Now she was just a blank face, an unimportant background character in a world of more important people. Marx went down the alley at the side of the hotel towards the kitchen, a row of dumpsters piled high with discarded cuisine, offcuts of meat and vegetable peels rotting in rusting street-ovens in the summer heat. She switched off her sense of smell whilst walking past them, it would only be for mere seconds, but she figured she might as well make use of her advanced control functions. The door to the kitchen was locked, APEXecurity controlling the access points for the whole hotel. Reaching for the door handle, whispers through the Network had it unlocked and camera feeds looping to mask her entry into the building.

She walked along the corridor, tying up her hair as her newly-adopted confident strut told the few waitstaff she passed that
she belonged
. Following a waitress into the bathroom, Marx lay a hand on the blonde waif's neck as she entered a stall. In an instant, orders had been dictated to her brain, the waitress was removing her clothes and handing them over. She then sat on the toilet, locked herself in, and closed her eyes as her pineal gland started secreting melatonin accompanied by a DMT chaser, sending her into a deep sleep with vivid psychedelic dreams that would keep her unconscious for the next few hours. Dressing in the woman's uniform, Marx pushed her clothes under the stall so her sleeping victim wouldn't be left in her underwear. Chances are, Marx wasn't going to have the luxury of time on her exit, and she felt bad at the idea of causing a stranger embarrassment. She lingered on the thought for longer than necessary. It was nice to care about another human being, proved she was still human and could be concerned with those outside the Network, even if it was just a small gesture.

Emerging from the toilets, Marx blended in with the staff milling around the kitchen, taking hors d'oeuvres and champagne out to the esteemed guests. She grabbed a tray of glasses and followed the centipede of servers out into the fray, scanning for her intended target. FaceRecog made it easier, she took her focus off individuals and watched everyone, every movement, every mannerism and expression. Time felt like it slowed to a standstill as she ducked and dove with grace through the sea of bodies, waiting for the background Recog process to chime in her head with an alert. Passing celebrities and personalities, actors and sports stars, she saw a gaggle of politicians verbally felating one-another with platitudes. Amongst them was a grey wisp of hair being lauded by people who didn't matter to Marx. She made her way round to catch a glimpse of his profile, flicking her vision back to singular-focus, and deep in the back of her mind the alert sounded. There he was, just feet away. She approached The Secretary Of State and offered him the tray.

“Champagne?” Marx asked, waiting to catch his eye. She wanted to watch his reaction when the connection was made.

“I'm good darlin'.” he said, ignoring her.
Marx didn't like to be ignored. She grabbed his wrist, her tray falling to the ground as his attention turned completely to her. The connection was made, and she began to dig through his conscious and subconscious for what they needed, feeding the collected intel back to the Network. He watched as psychedelic distortions bled into his eyeline, colour washes and patterns peeled across his field of view. The woman ahead of him was the only clear face in an ocean of waving hues and light. She dug deeper and deeper, needed to find his connection to The Company, his knowledge of The Experiment and The Facilities. She could see in her mind's eye the rush of information flowing into the ether, astrally projecting across vast distances to reach the other Network nodes. He just stared at her, as her face melted in to twenty other faces, each of them sharing her intrusion into his consciousness, delving
beyond
his consciousness.

She had what she needed, and let go of his wrist. The champagne flutes exploded in a shower of glass and bubbles on the marble floor, followed by the clang of the metal tray bouncing off between the legs of the affluent and erudite. The Secretary Of State continued to stare at the woman. She smiled to herself and stepped back into the crowd, her job done.

Shifting her sight from singular focus to hypersight, the whole room became pin-sharp, and she whipped through the mélange of people out to a fire exit. By the time she was out on the street, the Secretary was on the floor, his speech slurred, face half-drooping, body unresponsive. She hadn't intended on causing a stroke, but it was too late now. The alarm had been raised.

The streets of New York burst to life with sirens as Marx dashed across blocks, twisting and turning round corners and through alleys whenever possible. It was too late to hide from the A-Eyes, she just had to hope that the Network could jam the Recog from her exit, keep her face off the system, and aid in her escape from afar. If she could get across the bridge she'd be safe. Brooklyn was all but theirs, but it was a long way by foot and the cops had A-Eyes everywhere. Hypersight gave her the edge, she ran through the crowds, weaving in and out of people at full speed.

As a police car rolled up ahead of her, she was over the bonnet and pasted a palm on the exiting officer, in an instant telling his body to pass out. His partner was more worried about his fallen colleague than chasing a ghost that had disappeared amidst a street full of faces. Sliding down the bannister to the 57
th
Street subway, Marx went through the turnstile just as the F to Coney Island was approaching. She didn't care where the train was headed, as long as it took her out of the vicinity.

There was no sign of pursuit as the train left the station, but that didn't mean she was safe. Marx got out at 42
nd
Bryant Park, once again hiding in plain sight, scrolling through gaits of innocent walks until she found one that was different enough to those she had used previously. They might not have Recog data, but the FBI would already be involved, scanning gait patterns based on her entry and exit at the hotel.

She had tangled with them the last time the Network intercepted a Senator's intel. Pissing off Agent Callum Murphy, a brooding giant of a man, who was borderline obsessed with tracking her down. She thought of him fondly, or more specifically thought fondly of outsmarting him when he tried to apprehend her last. Walking down through Times Square, she smiled at how ridiculous he looked when she laid a hand on him back then, sending a short-run subroutine into his consciousness that replayed an oft-recurring dream he had in which he was a ballerina in the Bolshoi Company. He was half-way through the first act of Swan Lake when the subroutine deactivated and he returned to a waking state, having spent the previous thirty minutes dancing for the Dallas PD.

Marx slunk through the crowd toward the A-train, but her bemused memory was short-lived, as she felt cold metal wrap around her wrists, the
cla-clink
of cuffs locking in on themselves, her other hand wrenched behind her back. She turned to see the large, beaming face of Agent Murphy staring down at her.

“Miss me?” he said, his grin revealing preternaturally large teeth more suited to a dog than a man.
She smiled. “Kinda miss the ballet more.” Marx said, unphased by her captor.

“You're not getting away so easy this time.” he said, cuffing her other hand.

“You'll let me go before you know it...” she said, taking a tight hold of his fingers

In an instant, the connection was made, his mind tapped into the Network. Time around him stopped dead in its tracks, a haze of colour and light, patterns and shapes crawling across his sight. As he stood there, he knew everything about the woman, the Network, their entire lives played out in 3D VR surround sound cinemascope smellovision in front of his eyes.