Read The Bridge Chronicles Trilogy Online
Authors: Gary Ballard
Tags: #noir, #speculative fiction, #hard boiled, #science fiction, #cybernetics, #scifi, #cyberpunk, #near future, #urban fantasy
It was Danton’s turn to sip in silence, thoughts passing across her face like leaves in a strong wind. “How’d you get the better of a hitter like that then? You aren’t exactly what I would call a fighter. I’ve seen you take more beatdowns than a rented mule.”
“No, I’m no fighter. But what I am is clever. See my boy Mu over there? That little trick he does with the lightning? He can do lots of things like that. He can do crazy ass shit like embed these little balls of energy all around my apartment. And these balls of energy don’t do nothing at all, until I give the word, right? At which point…” Bridge made a silent pantomime of an explosion.
“How did you survive that?”
“Force bubble. One of those balls of energy finds me and protects me. You’d need a tank to break through that thing and it’d be a tough go even then. The bubble gets thrown clear and Mu over there is alerted that his little trap has been tripped and he gets my ass out of the area. I didn’t realize how loud that fucking explosion would be. I was tripping balls and half-blind when he found me.”
“Wait, if you had that trap set to voice activation, why didn’t the Baron3ss trip it once she figured out she was under attack.”
Visions of the arm again. Bridge stared a hole into the swirling brown liquid in his cup, trying to find an absolution there that did not exist. “She didn’t know about it,” he whispered.
Danton leaned over the table, straining to hear. “What did you say?”
“She didn’t know about it. I didn’t tell her.”
Surprised shock turned to anger on Danton’s face. “You fucking bastard.”
“That I am,” Bridge sighed. “You gotta understand how this relationship worked. Shit, I’m not sure hom not suw it worked. We’ve been together now about what, two years off and on and I can safely say that neither one of us trusted the other as far we could throw them. I mean, you know me, right? Would you trust me?” The look on Danton’s face said it all. “Yeah, of course you wouldn’t. Well, she didn’t trust me and with good reason, but it ain’t like she was some saint either. This woman stole money from pension funds for a living; she had the network to ruin a person’s life with a few emails. Don’t think she’d ever hesitate to use it, either.”
‘
And yet, she hadn’t,
’ Bridge thought to himself. ‘
All those months we were apart, she kept working with you, kept talking to you. You want to think she was as bad as you, but you’re probably wrong.
’
“Sounds like you were made for each other,” Danton spat sarcastically. The hangdog look on Bridge’s face must have made her instantly regret it. “Sorry. You have that effect on me. You’re still a bastard.”
“Yeah, I said as much.”
“Do I even have a chance to find out why someone sent a killer to whack you?”
“Not really. We both know it could be any number of reasons. He was a talkative cunt, though, cocky. I know why, but the less you know about it, the better for us both.”
Danton finished off her plate and tossed the fork to the plate with a clatter. “Then what is this, Bridge? I assume you set up this little meet for a reason.”
“Yeah, I know the owner. We’ve done some business. He agreed to clear the place out when you came in this morning so we could chat in private.”
“About?”
“I need your help.”
Danton wore an expression of disgusted surprise as if Bridge had dropped a sack of monkey shit on the table between them that he claimed was gold. “That’s rich. You really are trying to get me fired aren’t you?”
“Officer Danton, I would never do anything that I believed would get you in hot water with your superiors. After all, you are an invaluable asset for a man whose entire livelihood is predicated on knowing important people.”
Her eyes squinted hard. “Does that fancy talk impress anyone?”
“Sometimes.” Bridge stared hard at the area around her eyes. “You’ve had work done. Recently.” He waved his finger around his own eyes to indicate what he saw. The diversion worked, as her posture withdrew from the table a little, an embarrassed flush staining her cheeks red.
“How’d you know?”
“I work with some of the craziest fuckers on the planet, the kind of guys who’ll implant one-shots in their goddamn earholes. I’ve seen some of the sloppiest work ever, the kind of stuff make your stomach turn. I can recognize when someone gets cybered up. You get the full HUD package?”
“As much as I could afford. Low-light, zoom, recording, clock, targeting.”
“Impressive. Good stitch work too, took me a while to see it. Almost no scarring to speak of. Who’s the doc?”
“Department connection. You want to stop trying to butter me up on my cybernetics and tell me what you expect me to help you do?” Bridge took another sip of his coffee, grimacing at the now lukewarm sludge.
“The Families are in trouble,” he began. “But you know this as well as I do. You’ve seen the streets, you know what’s going down. This war is fucking killing them.”
“Good riddance. These guys are dealing drugs and killing people. They are breaking the law and getting what’s coming to them. I’m not sure I see the problem.” Her words were harsh, but her body language didn’t match. She had been staring Bridge directly in the eye, but her gaze dropped sullenly to her plate as she offered her judgement. Her fork poked absentmindedly at the remainder of the eggs on her plate. “How many people have they killed with this little war that had nothing to do with their beef?”
“You got me there. They’re criminals, all right. Of course, I don’t know many criminals that get sentenced to having a six-inch blade stuck through their fucking forehead.” Danton’s head snapped up, surprise mixed with guilt written across her face like a scarlet letter.
“How did you know about that?”
“What do I know about, Officer Danton? That squad of metaled-up psychos Chronosoft dropped in the middle of a warehouse shootout yesterday?”
“How did you hear about that?”
“I know people. You’ll be unhappy to know they didn’t manage to cap everyone on the scene.”
“Someone escaped? I thought so. They should turn themselves in, you know. We have DNA markers on her.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening. You think she’s going to turn herself in to that crew?”
“She doesn’t have to go with Special Squad. She can turn herself in to me.”
Bridge’s eyes lit up. “Special Squad, huh? That what they’re called?”
Danton cursed under her breath at her slith at hep up. “You didn’t hear that from me.”
“Hear what?” He couldn’t resist a bit of victorious smugness sneaking onto his lips. “Look, I don’t care what they call those bastards. All I know is the ante has been upped. CLED’s dropping their big guns on the war. This isn’t about a bunch of criminals doing criminal shit. The Families aren’t just gangsters. Since the riots, they’ve been taking in all sorts of civvies, giving them food, shelter, money… all the shit the government is supposed to at least let them have the opportunity to earn. But instead of taking care of them, it’s taking their houses and tossing them on the streets if they’re within a mile of gang activity. You know what I’m talking about. How many regular jackoffs have you had to evict because of a drive-by down the street?”
Another sullen silence filled the air.
“Yeah, you know I’m right. Your precious mayor is shuffling people around like poker chips. And what’s being done with the houses, with the land once the evictions are processed? Do you even know? I’ll tell you what, it’s being bought up for pennies on the dollar and turned into the new, Chronosoft-approved Los Angeles.”
“He’s not my mayor. I didn’t vote for him.”
Bridge was taken aback. “You voted for the pedo?”
“Fuck no!” Danton spat. “I voted for the woman, the indie.”
“Oh, you’re one of those. You did a sympathy vote. Did she even get 1%?”
Danton chuckled. “I’m not sure she got any votes besides mine and her family’s. But it was better than tossing one at that slick cocksucker Soto. He reminds me of a few one-night stands I had.”
“Ooo, you vixen you. Do tell.” She tossed a napkin playfully at him.
“I’m not about to fulfill your sick wank fantasies.” Her smile faded quickly. “What is this help you need? What have you got brewing in that twisted little head of yours?”
“I’m working on that. I don’t have a full idea yet, but I’ve got to stop this war before it gets too out of control.”
“I ain’t sure that’s possible, Bridge,” Danton replied. “CLED’s pretty much activated shoot-on-sight protocols for the Families. All of them. This might have started between
Diablos
and
Magos
, but they’re all in the crosshairs now.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. There’s something not right about all this. I tried to mediate some kind of settlement between Nacho and
Los Magos
, and I got nowhere. It wasn’t just that he didn’t want to make peace, I swear he was totally confident he would come out on top. And it wasn’t just about the super hardware they had.”
“What hardware?”
“Guns, mostly. I mean, super-duper, cutting edge guns, stuff the goddamn military probably can’t afford these days. It was like, corporate-cop grade shit. Which when you consider they are the smallest and broke-est of the Families, seemed… off, you know what I mean?”
“You think they have a sugar daddy?”
“Maybe. It’s got to be someone big.” Soto’s smug face flitted through his thoughts. “Someone like mayor big.”
“You think the mayor is supplying weapons to a gang?”
“I think the mayor is making hay with the situation. And I goddamn sure wouldn’t put it past that bastard to have some remote, unconnected hands out there doing some illegal shit. You’ve never heard the real stories about his little neighborhood defense during the riots, have you?”
She shook her head. “Just the campaign commercial highlights.”
“Well, you don’t want to know. It ain’t pretty. So are you in?”
Her decision made, she pushed the plate away. “Maybe. As long as it doesn’t involve anything more illegal than talking to you.”
“All I’ll need is your presence as a police officer when the time comes.”
“What about Aristotle?”
“Don’t tell Marcus anything about this… yet. The less he keeps trying to find me, the better.”
“Some friend you are. You really going to let him keep thinking you’re dead?”
“For the moment, yes. If you have to tell him anything, tell him to shack up with the Panthers.”
“You want him to get in good with the Families? How is that protecting him?”
“The Panthers are on this non-violence kick. He’ll dig that. They’ll do everything in their power not to fight, which should help him avoid the worst of this thing. By the time he knows, hopefully I’ll have accomplished what I need in order to stop this thing.”
“So what is this, some new leaf you’re turning over? The compassionate, caring Bridge who saves lives? Some kind of guilt therapy? Are you actually trying to be a better person?”
Bridge gripped the edge of the table, his mind constantly replaying that horror show, that lifeless arm still dangling, a symbol of the death of hope.
“I don’t do guilt,” he said slowly, staring at his white-knuckled hands as they clung to the table. “This ain’t about being a better person. This is about some r about seal bastards doing real bastard shit to people with no ability to fight back. I hate that shit. Bad enough fuckers like Soto got more money than most folks make in a decade; it’s never enough. It never will be. They push and push, and I’m tired of being pushed. So I’m going to push back.” He stood quickly, dropping a few bills of Five-Year on the table. “For your breakfast. Don’t say I never gave you nothing.”
He started to walk away, stopped and turned back. “Look, I may save some lives. I may help some people with something that doesn’t involve them giving in to the worst, most depraved desires they refuse to control. I may do better things with my life.” He stuck his hands into his pockets. “But that won’t make me a better man.” With that, he spun on his heels and walked out, tossing a wave behind him without looking back.
Chapter 11
March 10, 2029
2:20 p.m.
Bridge rang Freeman’s doorbell and stepped back, expecting to have to repeat the act a few times before the reclusive hacker would answer. He tossed a smirk and a wave at the unseen camera installed above the doorframe, knowing that Freeman would be watching from the distant cavern of his crèche. To his surprise, the door opened within seconds, revealing a stranger. “Hey, can I help you?”
The stranger was about an inch taller than Bridge, his short-cropped blonde hair thinning at the front. An apron hung loosely over his frame, obscuring the slogan printed on the T-shirt he wore with a pair of dingy blue jeans. Smudges of dusty filth ran up and down the apron, and the broom held in his left hand trailed dust bunnies behind. The man’s deeply sunken eyes had the first rings of sleep deprivation indicative of late nights in a crèche. Taken aback, Bridge stammered, “Ummm, I’m looking for Freeman. Isn’t this his place?”
“Yeah, you’re in the right place. I’m just doing a little cleaning. Michael’s a bit… distracted. Was he expecting you?”
Bridge peered into the apartment left and right. Half the place was in the process of being cleaned, while the other place showed all the signs of a hacker’s lack of maintenance. That in itself was noteworthy. The last time Bridge had visited Freeman, the place had been spotless, an OCD clean freak’s wet dream. Even the parts that had been cleaned were worse off than before. “No, not exactly. Who are you?”
If the forwardness insulted the man, he hid it well. “Oh, Mike Kramer. Me and Freeman work together. He needed someone to, you know, clean the place up.” He indicated the broom in hand. “I volunteered.”
Bridge raised an inquisintive eyebrow. “What do you get out of the deal?”
Kramer’s face took on an expression of genuine confusion, as if he couldn’t fathom its meaning. “Well, I…” His confusion continued as he scratched a clean-shaven chin. “That’s a good question. The place did need it. He’s been really busy lately.”
“Uh-huh. Can I come in? Freeman! Get your ass out of that crèche, we gotta talk!” Bridge pushed himself into the room past Kramer, Mu walking in behind with a crooked smile. “And I don’t mean send out a hologram, you bastard! I mean the real you, the fleshy bits.” The sound of activity in the bedroom drew Bridge’s attention. Kramer stumbled over his words trying to calm Bridge.
The bedroom door flew open. With a scream of insanity, a dripping wet naked Michael Freeman shot out of the room, making a mad beeline for Bridge. With only a second to brace himself, Bridge took the tackle awkwardly. He fell backward with Freeman on top. The hacker god came up swinging, landing at least two good punches on Bridge’s chin despite his graceless, insane flailing. Mu leapt into action, tossing Freeman across the room with a spell, knocking Kramer over the couch in the process. Freeman never stopped, bouncing off the wall into a crouch and running back at Bridge again. Mu stopped him again, pinning the man in mid-air with force shackles on every limb. Kramer’s eyes bulged at the sight of his friend hanging naked in mid-air. Bridge struggled to his feet, making sure to close the door from prying eyes.
Rubbing his chin, he said, “Nice to see you too, Freeman. What the fuck, man?”
“YOU KILLED HER!” Spittle flew wildly from Freeman’s mouth. His eyes burned with insane fury. “YOU FUCKING KILLED HER AND NOW YOU’RE HERE!”
“How are you holding him up like that?” Kramer spluttered.
“Magic,” Mu replied with an evil grin.
“You’re a technomancer?”
Mu nodded.
“Freeman, calm down, you’re going to give yourself a stroke. I didn’t kill her.”
“Bullshit! I read the police report.”
“Good for you. You don’t think I made that police report look like I needed it to look?”
Freeman’s face slackened. “She’s not dead?” A flicker of hope broke the fury in his eyes. Bridge stared down at his shoes for a second, then back into Freeman’s eyes.
“No, she’s dead. I mean I wasn’t the one who killed her. But I had to make it look like I was dead too, get some of the heat off me for a few days.”
“Who killed her?”
“Some hired gun looking for me. Not important. He ain’t looking no more.”
Freeman seemed to finally notice his nakedness, notice that he hung suspended in mid-air by nothing. He slumped against his invisible shackles. “Can you put me down now?”
Mu fixed him with a stern glare. “You going to calm down, stop attacking people?” Freeman nodded solemnly. Mu looked to Bridge before releasing the spell.
Freeman fell to earth with a thump. His legs wobbled. “What do you want, Bridge?”
“We need to talk. We can do it here with your junk all hanging out, or you can go shower off while your buddy here makes me comfortable and gets me a fucking towel. You got crèche cooze all over me.”
“We’re not through with this Angela thing.”
“I know. Go get cleaned up, you stink like armpit.” Freeman went to shower while Kramer made coffee.
Bridge and Mu settled into the couch, a large cocoa sectional in a U-shape across from a wall-size screen with a layer of dust that could choke a horse. Kramer continued his cleaning, making small talk with Mu. “What are those symbols on your… is that a cape?”
“Yes. They’re runes, the secret language of my order.”
“What do they say?” Mu returned a wry smile and declined to answer. “Right, I guess it wouldn’t be a secret language if you told everybody what they said. But if I’m not mistaken, it’s based off a Nordic pattern, with some Asian influence.”
“How did you know?”
“I dabbled in cyberwicca when I was younger. You know, the stupid things you do in college to try to get in some hippie chick’s panties. Although, I always thought it was ironic that she was hosting mother earth rituals in an artificial GlobalNet space. How is that even remotely connected to nature?” Bridge ignored the two as Kramer prattled on nervously.
Finally, Freeman staggered out of the bathroom with a towel in hand, his hair still dripping. The fire had gone from his eyes, his posture a shambling story of fatigue on crumpled paper. He flopped down opposite Bridge with a loud sigh.
“Tired?”
“Wrecked. I haven’t slept in… Mike, when did I sleep last?”
Kramer stopped his dusting, considering the question. “Two days ago? Three?”
“Something like that.”
“The eggheads still got you on some hot dose?”
Freeman nodded. “Less of it, but I still get it weekly. It’s had the desired effect.” He didn’t elaborate. “I’ve been scouring the net the last few days trying to find out about Angela. You did a fantastic fucking job making sure I couldn’t find a goddamn thing.”
“Our mutual friends,” Bridge said, indicating the technomancers.
Freeman held a position of the highest esteem amongst the hacker community, the cyberpunk’s cyberpunk. He was a legend. Even before the days of the Sukemura Plug™ and the GlobalNet, Freeman had been cracking computer systems for fun and profit. Considered the god of hackers, his reputation was such that he could use his own name without fear of reprisals. Years before the riots, he had decided to end his freelance lifestyle, getting a job with Chronosoft, where he had become the golden boy of their IT efforts. Every computer system in the company bore his mark in some fashion. Any other hacker choosing regular corporate employment would have been shunned by the hackers, but not Freeman. It only enhanced his reputation. Every hacker with something to prove went after him through his employer, but none had managed to do significant damage.
Bridge had known him through Angela’s contacts. As one of the few freelance information brokers he would work for after joining the company, they had been close, as close as hackers could get to other hackers. During the previous year’s election, that limey ex-footballer cum hardass bastard Paulie had kidnapped her to force Bridge to leak the video of Sunderland’s dirty laundry, and Freeman had been willing to help Bridge for no other reason than to protect Angie. Freeman had leaked the video of the mayor to every email box on the West Coast, a trivial matter for someone of his ability. The video had ensured that Soto won the election, but Bridge had requested something more elaborate from Freeman. Freeman had bombarded the vote tallying software, making it appear the counts had been falsified even though he’d actually done nothing to the tallies. The resulting specter of election fraud had caused Soto’s administration no end of grief, eroding his legitimacy. Freeman had called in the favor last November, entangling Bridge with the scientists that would become the first technomancers in Boulder, Colorado.
“What happened to her, Bridge?”
“She was in the crèche when the guy came looking for me. I wasn’t there, so he killed her and waited for me. He didn’t expect me to have a failsafe. Mu over there had set up a ward that blew the place sky high when I gave the word.”
“Why didn’t Angela use the word?”
“Because she didn’t know about it.”
Silence.
“You didn’t tell her?”
Bridge stared dowman" colon the hacker, his own angry fire mixed with guilt written across his face.
“You might as well have killed her then.”
“Hey, I wouldn’t act so innocent and judgmental over there, buddy. There’s a reason that guy was gunning for me. He was sniffing around about… that thing last year.” Bridge raised his eyebrows, trying to indicate the incident in Boulder with the technomancers without saying it, in case Mu was listening. “And if I recall, you’re the bastard what got me in that situation in the first place. It’s as much your fault as mine.” Bridge said it, but without feeling.
“One helluva hacker,” Freeman said. “One helluva woman.”
“Yeah,” was all Bridge could think to say. An idea came to him at that moment, a final clicking into place of puzzle pieces.
“How long?”
“How long what?”
“How long were you two doing whatever it was you two did?”
Instead of trying to deny it, Freeman admitted it. “Off an on since before the riots. More when you weren’t around.”
“Was it ever physical?”
“Freeman never touched her in the flesh,” the hacker replied. Bridge blinked. He’d often heard of hackers getting so deep that they started referring to themselves in the third person. There was even a name for it, cyber identity crisis. The hacker lived in a world of shifting identities; everyone had multiple names, names for avatars, names for virtual worlds, names for casual games, backup ID’s for cracking runs, dummy emails and credentials for all sorts of money transfers, information dumps and false trails. In addition, the constant hours and days spent awake, brains constantly stimulated with reams of information from both physical body and GlobalNet feeds fatigued the thought processes. Bridge had even heard tales of multiple personalities springing from overuse of GlobalNet interface.
“What did you say?”
“We weren’t ever together in the meat,” Freeman responded. Bridge squinted hard, thought about pointing out Freeman’s slip of the tongue but let it drop. “That’s not how I roll.”
“You weren’t the first. I’m guessing anyway. It ain’t like I was the world’s greatest boyfriend.”
“Yeah. But she still loved you. You could tell. Nobody else mattered.” Freeman’s voice trailed off. He raised his hand and stared at it, turning it over and over in the air, his expression one of wonder, as if he had never seen the limb before and was fascinated with it. “I hear things.”
“What things?”
“Sounds. Distant sounds, from distant grounds. The sound of great machines moving closer, coming closer. The voices of giants in a teacup. Freeman doesn’t know what to make of them.”
Bridge snapped his fingers loudly, waving his hands in front of the hacker’s glazed eyes. “Yo, Freeman, back here! Stay with me! That’s the second time you’ve referred to yourself in the third person. It’s really fucking irritating.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re calling yourself Freeman, going all space cadet on me. What the hell have they got you on?”
“Nothing I can talk about. I’m fine. I’m fine.” His expression hardened. “You’re here for something. What do you want?”
“I need a backdoor into the LGL’s records.”
“That’s it?”
“Sure. I know you have about a hundred stashed all up and down Chronosoft’s systems. I only need one.”
“You planning on hacking the big boys?”
“Me? Hell no, my hacking days are done. That’s the other part of what I need. I need to use a crèche for about a day. Somebody is going to be hacking Chronosoft, and I need to get in touch with them via the Net. They don’t exactly take visitors.”
“Why don’t you just have me do it?”
“Because you’re a little too close to the target, for one. Because I’d rather not implicate you at all, for another. And finally, as good as you are, there’s only one of you. I got lots of work that needs to be done in not a lot of time, which means I need a whole army of people to do it. I don’t have time to waste, so I don’t need them to spend effort getting in, which is why I need the back door.”