A split second later Lanier heard Dr. Lambert yell "No!" There was a faint crackle of energy and a feeling like static electricity raised the hairs on his neck, followed by the sound of men and weapons clattering to the tile floor.
Lanier poked his head up over the crate just in time to see Dr. Westcott’s glowing barrier flicker and fade. The doctor’s eyes rolled back into his head and his knees buckled. Babel caught him under one arm and lowered him to the floor. Westcott continued quietly muttering under his breath, a litany Lanier could barely make out. Instead of the arcane words he’d chanted before, Westcott whispered, "One one zero zero one zero zero zero one one one zero zero one zero zero zero one one one zero zero one zero zero zero one one."
Over and over again.
All of the rapid-fire spellcasting he had done had clearly exhausted the mage, added to whatever had happened during the mind probe. The remaining two security guards and Dr. Lambert were sprawled out on the floor with not a mark on them.
The guards’ armor had done nothing to protect them against the power of Westcott’s spell. Lanier had been able to get out of Westcott’s line of sight, gambling that the mage was casting a spell intended to take out everyone in the room. What a spellcaster couldn’t see, he couldn’t affect, so Lanier, concealed by the packing crate, had been spared the effects of whatever Westcott had used to take the guards and Lambert down.
Babel
stepped over to the nearest unconscious guard and picked up his sidearm, checking the slide and the clip. Then he turned to where Lanier stood behind the crate with a faint smile on his face. He was breathing heavily and his brow gleamed with sweat, like he had just run a race, but his movements were steady and sure.
"If you want to get out here, Mr. Lanier, you can come with me. We have a better chance working together. Otherwise, you can stay here and take your chances.
Your choice."
Without waiting for a reply, Babel turned and headed for the door of the room.
Lanier hadn’t made a successful career in the megacorporate world by ignoring his opportunities. He walked out from behind the crate to accept the offer. Babel stopped in front of the sealed door of the lab and said "Open." There was a click, and the maglocked door hissed open. Lanier and Babel calmly walked out of the laboratory, leaving the unconscious Renraku personnel behind.
"Nice trick with the crate," Babel said as he looked around the corridor.
"Thanks. Did you know I was going to do that?" At this point Lanier would believe almost anything about this set-up.
"No, but I’m glad you did. I can use your help."
"My help?
After what I did to you?"
Babel
just shrugged. "No worse than what they wanted to do to me." The facility was quiet. No alarm had been raised, and nobody was in sight. "And like I said—" Babel scanned the corridor as he spoke "—I figure we have a better chance of getting out of this together than separately. I’m kind of new to all this shadow-ops stuff."
"Could have fooled me.
What did you do to Westcott?" Lanier asked.
"Ever hear of psychotropic ice?" Babel said. "I used something similar. I subverted the simsense recording equipment through the link they had me jacked into and created a feedback loop between Westcott and me so I could download some reprogramming straight into Westcott’s brain. Similar to the stuff you used on me, in fact." The last was uttered with a trace of sarcasm.
Lanier chose to ignore it. "I didn’t know that was possible," he said.
Babel
smiled a ragged grin. "Neither did I for certain, but it worked. Ol' Westcott obviously never tried to hack into a brain with its own intrusion countermeasures before." Babel turned and moved down the corridor like a man with a purpose.
"Where the hell are you going?" Lanier demanded. "The way out is this way."
Babel
turned to look back over his shoulder. "I'm not leaving. Not yet. There’s something I came here to do. You can do what you want, but if you want to work with me, we go this way." He headed off down the corridor, and Lanier struggled for a moment over whether he should go for the possible escape route or stick with this enigmatic kid. The moment passed, and he turned and hurried down the corridor to catch up.
"Mind telling me where we’re going?" he said. "Or how you’re planning on getting out of here alive?"
"I need access to the Renraku network," Babel said. "The lab system is too isolated. I was able to deck into the building’s security system, though. I placed one of my spirit-helpers in the system to make sure no alarms get raised. With a little luck, nobody will know we’re gone until it’s too late."
"Spirit-helpers?"
Lanier said. He noted that Babel had made no mention of any plan for getting out of the
facility .
..
alive
or otherwise.
"One of my little helpers in the Matrix, like a program frame or an expert system, only much more ... aware."
"You’ve been planning to do this all along," Lanier said as he fitted the pieces together. "You
wanted
to get back to Renraku so you could get access to their system. Why?
To feed them false data?"
Babel
paused at a cross-corridor before choosing the left-hand branch. "Nothing so calculated," he said. "I didn’t even know exactly what I was supposed to do before you forced me to start to remember in your little ... playroom." Lanier noted the trace of bitterness in Babel’s voice again. He doubted that the young man was as forgiving as he pretended to be.
"I was given a mission, to bring ... something back into Renraku when they recalled me. Bits and pieces of it have been coming back to me since you started your interrogation."
Babel
paused at an intersection to check the other corridor. There was no one there, and he led Lanier past it.
"Do you know how a retrovirus works?" Babel asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. "It subverts the host’s DNA code, so the replications of the DNA also reproduce the virus. I’m like that, a single cell of Renraku Computer Systems, made into a virus and sent back to infect Renraku’s body."
"But why betray Renraku?" Lanier was genuinely baffled. "They would pay handsomely for what you know. They wouldn’t have chosen you for this job if you weren’t loyal to them."
Babel
paused and turned to look at Lanier with his strange violet eyes.
"I was. But you heard what happened to me in the Matrix. I wanted Renraku to know about it. I was loyal to Renraku because the company was all I knew all my life. When I was in the Matrix that night, I found something else I never imagined I would ever have. I found magic, and I’ll do anything to protect it from being controlled by a soulless company the way I was."
Babel
turned and continued to lead Lanier through the complex.
Lanier wanted to get out of there, so he went along for now. But, as always, he was just waiting for his own chance.
Don’t
think
your
"
magic
"
is
going
to
protect
you
from
the
corporate
interests
forever,
kid
.
A
lot
of
people
are
willing
to
kill
for
what
you
and
your
otaku
chummers
know
about
the
Matrix
.
And
I’m
one
of
them
.
I
have
somewhat
against
thee,
because
thou
hast
left
thy
first
love
.
—Revelation 2:4
Babel
led Lanier through the Renraku complex like he had a map in his head.
He
just
might,
at
that,
Lanier thought. He was certainly amazed at the way the security systems in the complex seemed to pay no attention to them whatsoever. They passed at least three security cameras that Lanier was aware of, but all continued to placidly scan the corridors with no indication that they even noticed the presence of the two people sneaking through the complex. No alarm raised, no security measure activated against them. Whatever Babel had done to the security system, it appeared to be working.
They arrived at a door a short distance from the interrogation room they had just left. There wasn’t a soul in the corridors of the facility, and they had seen no one since leaving that room. They stopped in front of a door with a security camera poised over it and a maglock card-reader set into the wall alongside. The door looked like a heavy-security type Lanier was familiar with. Without the right passkey to open the maglock, the door would require explosives to force open. The Uzis Lanier and Babel were carrying would barely scratch the door’s armor-composite structure. Lanier started to reach for the passkey in his jacket,
then
changed his mind. He wanted to see how Babel would handle it.
"This is the main computer center," Babel said softly. He stood in front of the door, Uzi in hand, and looked up at the security camera.
"Open sesame," he said. The red monitoring light on the camera blinked three times in rapid succession, followed by the indicator light on the maglock flashing from red to green. The door to the computer room slid open with a quiet hiss. Babel immediately stepped through it and off to the side, allowing Lanier to follow him into the room. The door hissed shut behind them with a solid click. Lanier suspected it was locked again as if nothing had ever happened.
Takana Saigo sat on the other side of the small room at a computer console connected to the impressive array of equipment in the room. Lanier recognized it as an access terminal set up for one of Renraku’s best corporate mainframe systems. The computing power of this complex had to be formidable, making it more than just a corporate research and development facility. Lanier suspected that the complex was part of some kind of bunker or "command center" Renraku could use to direct activities in the Matrix, a staging area from which to launch electronic assaults and forays against their corporate rivals. That meant Renraku was prepared to carry this gambit as far as they had to, even if it meant open conflict with the other megacorps. Lanier would use any means necessary to prevent that from happening.
Saigo started at the sudden appearance of the two men. He began to reach for the console in front of him, but Babel had his Uzi leveled at the Renraku executive’s chest with a steady aim.
"Don’t move," he said in a flat, cold tone. "I would hate to have to shoot you,
sensei
." Lanier caught the Japanese expression for "teacher" and glanced at Babel, then back at Saigo. He wondered if Babel recalled more about his background with Saigo than before. Saigo’s mouth opened and, for a moment, no sound came out of it. Within moments, he managed to regain control of his voice.
"How did you get in here?" he said.
"I called upon one of my helper spirits to open the door for us. What’s the matter, Saigo-sama
Haven’t
you ever seen a shaman at work?"
Saigo ignored the inference and his eyes flicked from Babel to Lanier and back. "Where are Lambert and Westcott?"
"I’m afraid they’re busy sleeping things off," Lanier said with a slight shrug. "They’ve had a very hard day.
Dr. Westcott especially."
"It’s no easy thing mucking around in the mind of a technoshaman," Babel said. "He learned that the hard way. Now you’re going to learn the same lesson."
"Michael," Saigo said in a quiet and calm tone, "what do you think you are doing? Have you gone mad?"
"On the contrary, honorable sir, for the first time in my life I feel quite sane."
"They’ve brainwashed you. The otaku ..."
Babel
smiled his ragged grin. "
Brainwashed .
..
yes
, I guess you could say that. They’ve washed out the years of corporate conditioning that made me think Renraku was the center of the universe. That what was good for the company was good for everyone. They showed me what life outside of the comfortable, sheltered, corporate world was like for everyone else: the squalor, the desperation, the ongoing fight for survival. And I learned that Renraku is willing to risk corporate war just to improve its standing on the stock markets and to punch up the bottom line."
"Michael, that’s not true, you know ..."
"Shut up!" Babel said. "That name does not bind me any longer. My name is Babel. Michael Bishop is dead. He has been expunged from any databanks, no trace of him remains. Your student is gone,
sensei
. He learned his lessons a little too well. You wanted to teach me to be a spy for you and the company, to make me into a weapon Renraku could use and then throw away. Well, your tool has gained a mind of its own, and I don’t like what I see."
Babel
was almost raving, and Lanier feared he might gun Saigo down right then and there. Not only would that damage the equipment in the room, but Saigo could be vital to getting them out of the Renraku complex alive. Lanier prepared to hold Babel back, but the young man didn’t strike out. Instead he scanned the computer console,
then
turned to Lanier.