John Shirley - Watch Dogs - Dark Clouds

Pearce chuckled to himself and tossed the butcher knife into a drainage grate. Better get out of here fast.

He crossed to the Ford Explorer, got in, and drove off, not turning on his lights till he was around the corner.

He hoped Wolfe had taken his advice and gone home.

Should’ve taken Pearce’s advice…

Wolfe pulled into a random driveway of this suburban neighborhood off the main drag. He killed the engine and got out into the cold night, hearing the sirens keening nearer.

He glanced up at the lamp posts. There were the ctOS cameras. Chances are his phone had scrambled his appearance—but it hadn’t disguised the car they were looking for.

Wolfe hurried down the street, looking for a hackable car. There, a Lexus. That’d work.

He used the proximity sensor when he got near the car, told its doors to unlock. It beeped softly at him and he got in, started it with the phone, backed out, and drove down the street.

But looking in the rearview he saw gumball lights spinning, a few blocks down. Looked like at least three patrol cars. He heard the sirens, then. For sure they’d gotten a report the SUV was stolen. And the ctOS had probably seen him change cars.

He could try and outrun them, but that usually didn’t work out, and then trying to operate the PearcePhone while driving—notoriously, a disastrous thing to do in itself.

He could just pull over, on the theory that they were looking for another vehicle. But they’d have his description and no way they wouldn’t check him out on their way. Especially now that the Chicago cops were hip to guys like Pearce and Wolfe “borrowing” cars, and changing them up.

He turned at the corner, hoping they’d drive by… but two of them screeched to a halt at the intersection…

Wolfe pulled over, hoping to bluff this out somehow.

Then his phone vibrated.

He pulled it out, as the cops turned in the intersection…

Steam started rising from a manhole cover—and suddenly it erupted upward, a water main geyser gushing up out it, knocking the steel cover into the front of the oncoming patrol car. The car ground to a halt, its engine totaled. Another manhole blew… and another water main shot its geyser into the sky, deflecting the second cop car. The street was almost submerged in spurting water, churning with steam and flooding.

Wolfe could just see the outlines of the cops getting out of their cars, baffled, backing away…

Wolfe answered the phone. “That you, Pearce? You blow up those watermains somehow?”

“Yep. Got my system monitoring CPD—and Tranter. He called in your car. Said it was probably stolen… And it is stolen. So… I came out to see what I could do. Watched through the cameras, hacked into the hydraulic public works control.”

“What do I do now?”

“Get out of that car. Your phone’ll blur the cameras—I’ve reset it to do that at the moment. Head into that alley behind the houses. I’m coming to get you…”

Wolfe got out of the SUV, ran to the right, into the broad alley between the houses. Dogs barked at him. The lights suddenly dimmed around him—Pearce had blacked the area out.

A car was turning into the alley up ahead.

Wolfe stepped out of the way and a black Ford Explorer pulled up. The driver’s side window hummed down.

“Get in, ya dumbjack, fast!” Pearce shouted.

Wolfe ran around the Explorer, the door opened and he climbed in.

Pearce started backing down the alley. He knocked over a couple of garbage cans in the dimness, then they were on the cross street, turning, and racing off toward the Southside of town.

“Grampus is dead,” Pearce said, the way another guy would say, “It’s raining again.”

“You killed him?”

“Yeah. I got in and stabbed him. Quieter.”

“Pearce,” Wolfe said, looking out the back window, “I thought Somalia was stressful. But you know what? Getting into your scene, in Chicago—that might be worse.”

“You get used to it,” Pearce said, yawning. “Man I need to go home and lay down.”

Wolfe was sleeping in on the sofa bed when Pearce called—the PC switched on and he heard Pearce’s voice. “Hey, hotshot. Get your ass up.” Pearce’s face was on the PC monitor.

Wolfe swung his feet onto the floor. “You bring coffee?”

“Are you joking?”

“Naturally. What’s up?” Wolfe got up, and boiled some water in the microwave.

“I finally got that encrypted message Grampus sent out de crypted… He says—well here, read it…”

Wolfe hastily dumped some instant coffee in his hot water, swirled it, tasted it, grimaced, drank some more as he went to the PC. He read the decryption Pearce provided in a note window:

I did my part. I killed Pearce. Tranter might not be convinced of it but I am. No one has proved the vigilante isn’t dead. And what I am saying, boss, is that when the project kills hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people, it’s going to bring the New World Order right down on our asses, the US gov will come for us and they’re not gonna neglect me. They got me on their list. That guy at the Purity talk today was probably some federal agent. Hiding me here from him is only good for so long. I’m gonna need a way out of the country and plenty of money…

“Holy shit,” Wolfe said.

“That’s what I said too, coincidentally,” Pearce told him dryly.

“Maybe millions of people…”

“Give or take a few hundred thousand. These assholes are either completely delusional—or they’re a serious threat.”

“We have to tell Homeland Security about this, man. Connect it up with this ‘Purity’ thing for them…”

“I would. Anonymously. Except that General Van Ness is involved in this and he has deep connections to Homeland Security. And the Dousch Brothers are involved—judging by what you told me when I was driving you back to the safehouse. And the Dousch Brothers have huge influence over media. We need more evidence, not just your word on it. This decryption could be faked up, for all they know. It’s not like the feds are going to listen to you, the guy with a year in the military penitentiary… or me. We also need to know what they’re up to. He doesn’t say how it’s going to happen. And there was no reply to the email. But I have got something else that might bring the whole thing down. If we can get hold of it. My source in DedSec says there’s a big file that could soon be leaked by DedSec, implicating Verrick and Van Ness in the murder of a CIA agent…”

“A woman named Medina?”

“I don’t have the agent’s name yet. But that’s probably it. Because you’re in these files too. Only this isn’t happening right this minute—DedSec is going to lengths to try and confirm that the file’s the real deal.”

“At least they think you’re dead.”

“Seems like they’re conflicted about that. I know the feeling.”

“Who did Grampus send that message to?”

“Haven’t got a name. It’s an email that’s listed as one of about fifty screen names used by Iceberg Investments. But there’s no name associated with it, no matter how I dig—which is freaky in itself. I do know where it was picked up though. A place out in the country… A place belonging to the Blume Corporation. They used it to demonstrate a Blume SmartHouse design.”

“Who’s staying out there?”

“To find out, one of us has to go out there. And the guy who pretends to be my doctor… he did used to be a doctor… he says I’ve gotta to take it easy for a few days. So let’s see. Who does that leave?”

The text startled Seline. Not the chime that announced it—what startled her was the message.