The Bridge Chronicles Trilogy (44 page)

Chapter 13

March 11, 2029

Time Unknown

Bridge floated in formless ether, completely unconcerned that his surroundings were nonexistent. He had asked Far-el for a clean room to stew in, then promptly removed every bit of decoration. Floating textureless, a vaguely-humanoid shaped blob of mercury shifted its shape with every stray thought passing through his mind. Dark cloudy space with the occasional twinkling star of data wrapped him in a blanket of shadow.

His body floated in the human soup, a dall sensory stimulation cut off by the crèche in Freeman’s apartment. But his mind needed that sensory deprivation as well, so he locked himself in the GlobalNet equivalent of a sensory deprivation tank. He needed to think. Bridge always said he didn’t do guilt, but he really meant that he ignored any guilt he might feel for as long as he could. The guilt bank had reached overflowing.

Too many things to be guilty about. Though he hadn’t promised he would rescue Aristotle’s grandmother from the dome in Boulder, he had certainly implied that his trip to the dome had something to do with the elderly woman. But he hadn’t gone there for Lalasa Freeman, he’d gone because the technomancers had forced him, had assaulted him psychically through his interface jack. He couldn’t have done anything to help Lalasa Freeman, but telling himself that over and over for the last five months hadn’t reduced the guilt one iota. In fact, all 30,000 of the deaths that had resulted from the technomancers ill-conceived experiment in Boulder weren’t his responsibility, yet he felt responsible all the same. Balfour and the rest of the wizards couldn’t really even be sure the people were dead, but Bridge knew his help had ensured the scientists turned wizards avoided the repercussions of their actions.

And then there was the escape from Boulder, the mad parade of remote-controlled cars that transformed into robotic golems and smashed through a cordon of National Guard and Legios Ranger checkpoints. That idea had been Bridge’s, and it had resulted in deaths: five soldiers and seven Rangers according to the news feeds. Carl’s dragon illusion had killed at least two other soldiers by blowing up a tank. But one death in particular affected Bridge. He had been driving when their convoy had broken through the last checkpoint, and in doing so, he had run over a soldier fleeing from one of the robots. Bridge had tried to avoid the soldier, but the sickening crunch of metal on bone had been unmistakable. Bridge had locked eyes with the dying soldier, had watched the young man spin and fall, a broken rag doll whose last moments must have been filled with the most uncomprehending fear and confusion. Bridge had been relieved to discover Corporal Eager, as the news had identified him, at least had not been married, or a father. At least there was that. Bridge had not made a widow or orphan. But there had been nights since that had found Bridge wide awake, eyes boring into the ceiling while Cpl. Eager’s frightened death mask stared back.

All that guilt, every single bit, Bridge could have dealt with, could have put aside without too much trouble. Those deaths, regrettable as they may be, weren’t anyone important in his life. Sure, he felt bad for Aristotle’s grandmother, but it wasn’t like Aristotle couldn’t live without her. He’d been doing just fine the whole time he worked with Bridge, never letting Bridge know he even had a grandmother. But those deaths didn’t impact him. They had as much relevance to Bridge as the thousands that starved daily in Africa, or the deaths of political prisoners in China, or aliens millions of light years away. Angela was another story.

For the first time since he’d been pulled from the wreckage of his apartment, he let himself think about Angela, really think about her and remember her. Every memory, every phrase they uttered to each other, every nuance, every facial expression, every date, every party, every single instance he could bring to the surface of his thoughts, he reviewed. Disconnected from his body, none of the pain he should be feeling penetrated. His stomach did not churn. His eyes di. Butd not tear up. The great physical pain of loss that crawled up every inch of his body like his muscles had turned into paper wrinkling up in the brilliant sun underneath his clammy skin, that pain didn’t even register. The physical responses that grief triggered could not touch him in here, separated from the nerves that carried those feelings to his brain. He felt only the numbness of ethereal disembodiment. It was the perfect death of emotion, and he hated every minute of it.

At some point during his aimless drifting in GlobalNet space, Bridge fell asleep, his thoughts forming strange images in the formless void of the clean room. A buzzing sound immediately snapped him back to wakefulness. Far-el was contacting him. Bridge opened a video window displaying the chiseled good looks of his Bottle City persona. “The excavation job is done, Bridge.”

Bridge unconsciously shook his avatar’s head to ward off sleepiness despite not feeling any physical stimuli that required such a movement. “Good, good. Pipe me the link.” Far-el did so and Bridge opened a window into Angela’s data trove. “How about those other things?”

“We found the backdoor. I’ve got twenty guys poking around for the data you need right now.”

“And the Families?”

“Working it. The Panthers are hesitant, but they’re in.”

“Good man. Keep at it.” Bridge shut off the connection without further comment.

Bridge stared over the connection to Angela’s data with an uncharacteristic hesitation. An excavation didn’t merely open up the deceased’s data to access, it made it possible for the survivor to inhabit the deceased’s GlobalNet personas. Akin to wearing someone else’s skin, Bridge found himself reluctant to be this close to Angela this soon. Well aware of the urgent necessity, he promised himself he would only stay as long as necessary and no more.

The pain he felt upon entering her data domain eclipsed even his worst imaginations. He rezzed into her lobby, and immediately felt a cold mental shiver. The familiar settings somehow took on a completely different air with this kind of root access. Bridge could see the room’s normal exterior, the same exterior he saw when he had been allowed into this setting. But he also saw all the commands that Angela could execute to alter the room’s appearance, to allow access to others, and all the secret things she kept in the room that he never could have seen in his own ID. Emails piled up in her inbox, stylized as a bubbling witch’s cauldron that flashed to remind her that new messages waited. Portals littered the walls; all admin access portals to one of the many virtual worlds Angela had ties with, either as creator, demigod or volunteer administrator. He recognized her prized possession, Ars-Perthnia, as well as a few familiar ones. Bridge chuckled when he realized she had worked with Boostup Arena, one of the fabled “bloodsport” cyber arenas, where hackers pit themseell as a lves against other hackers in battles with very real, very potentially lethal consequences. A large, ledger-shaped book floated in the middle of the room. Grabbing it with her hand, it lit up with the phrase “Accounts” highlighted on the cover. Bridge assumed it to be a spreadsheet for her information brokerage. He set it aside for later. Someone would need to straighten out the accounts, take over the business or place her subordinates onto different paths, but not today.

He could feel Angela in the room. Perhaps it was the fact that his avatar assumed the form of Baroness Elethia that Angela had preferred. It felt unnatural and awkward, the kind of ill-fitting proxy body both unfamiliar and unwanted. He rifled through her available avatars and chose one that closely resembled an idealized version of her real body, only with all the obvious flaws removed. It helped only a little. Bridge sat cross-legged and levitated in the middle of the room.

His first task was to secure the avatar from other excavators. He generated a new series of encryption keys for access, changed all the passwords required, then flagged the account as active, shifting the billing access to one of Angela’s many backup accounts. This one appeared to get its money from a dry cleaner in Amsterdam owned by an Annalea Bosch. Bridge wanted to make sure that whoever Angela’s mother hired to dredge her dead daughter’s digital life would find nothing. He would ensure that Baroness Elethia lived on, somehow, some way, but the particulars of that operation would wait for another day, when time did not press so heavily on him.

He initiated a search for the keywords “Bridge” mixed with a number of other phrases like “car,” “shooting,” “stonewall” and “art show.” The search took a thankfully short time to return results, leaving him little time to ponder his surroundings further. The first link was the jackpot, a bundle of data organized in a folder. It included a recording of their conversations the night of the art show, when the first
Diablos
attack had taken place. He fast-forwarded through the conversations up until he reached the point of the attack, then watched the attack again through his own eyes, once removed. Finally, the frame he wanted appeared, showing the plate on the attacking vehicle before its destruction. Examining the frame brought up a blinking link highlighting the plate number and Bridge clicked it.

Angela had done her work well. The plate’s registration information came up almost immediately. Originally purchased by an Eduardo Sanchez of El Segundo, deceased, the car had passed through a succession of hands before being swept up in a CLED drug raid shortly after the riots had ended. The car had sat in police impound for over a year before it had been signed out by an officer in early summer 2028. From then on, its record was empty. The car had simply ceased to exist, its data trail ending at that point. How did a car get signed out from police impound to show up a year later as the getaway vehicle in a gang war drive-by? Bridge shifted back to the name of the officer assigned the vehicle, an Officer Vasquez. The name contained a link which Bridge clicked. Angela must have thought Vazquez was important enough to explore.

The cop’s dossier popped up, and Bridge sighed. “Of fucking course,” he said, everything becoming clear. He recognized the face instantly, despite the differences. Officer Vasquez was Chimuelo, second-in-command of
El Diablos
. The dossier listed Vasquez as deceased, of course, the, a bundle perfect cover for the kind of deep undercover work he must be doing.

He thought back to the conversation with Mayor Soto in the limo. Bridge had thought the mayor merely an opportunist, taking the most advantage of a situation that likely had been inevitable since the riots. He had thought Soto capable of spotting a weakness and profit from exploiting that weakness, but no more than that. But the shape of the real plan revealed itself to be much larger, much more ambitious than even Bridge could have imagined. Not content with waiting for an opportunity to exploit, Soto had decided to create one. Vasquez had been sent into
El Diablos
undercover and had worked himself very quickly into a position of influence. That was why Chimuelo had never taken a shot at Nacho. Why kill the leader when you could manipulate him instead? Chimuelo likely got
Diablos
the shiny new guns they were sporting, he got them cars and access to all the information CLED could gather. That was why
Diablos
had been able to work without an army of hackers. Once Vasquez as Chimuelo had created a big enough shitstorm between the gangs, CLED would be forced to step in and with all that super-duper hardware
Diablos
had been given, CLED would have no choice but to respond with superior force. The resulting bloodbath could not only take out most of the gangs, it could open up all new areas of the city for exploitation under the confiscation laws.

Bridge had exactly the information he needed, and the plan he’d been making up as he went along crystallized. He would need someone in the corporate way, someone with enough juice to make Chronosoft an offer they couldn’t refuse. It would be the only way to end the gang war without the destruction of the Families, but it would be dangerous. Bridge finished up what he could in Angela’s domain, then logged out. The apartment was dark as he crawled out of the crèche, stumbled to the shower, legs wobbly from so much time without use. The cold water pouring over his body cleared his mind further, setting an unavoidable path before him.

It was time for that Bridge magic.