Nyx Smith - Fade to Black

The strap now connected to Rico's body harness ended in an industrial-grade suction cup. Rico slapped the cup against the bottom of the elevator, pulled the cup's metal latch and locked it. The cup flattened out against the steel of the elevator. Rico bent his knees till his whole body weight pulled on the cup. It held.

The moment the rest of the team was ready, Rico keyed his headset. "Time check."

"Time is zero-one-two-nine." The elevator hummed and ascended. The floor of the shaft fell away quickly. Hanging from a single thin strap, having nothing to grab on to if the suction cup or strap gave way helped make it seem that way.

Two stories up, then three. The saucer-shaped drone Thorvin had running followed them right up the shaft, hovering maybe a meter beneath their feet. Rico looked up, but there was nothing to see but the flat steel plate of the elevator. Four stories, five, then six. Almost there. Rico drew his Ares automatic. At his right elbow, Filly did the same.

Seven stories.

"Stand by for landing," Rico said.

The elevator slowed, then stopped, perfectly positioned. They hung directly in front of the doors to the ninth floor. Rico braced his feet against the edge of flooring at the bottom of the doors and lifted the Ares, gripped two-handed. Filly Mowed suit. A moment passed, then several more. The doors didn't open.

Shank grunted. Impatient.

Maybe half a minute went by, time they couldn't afford to lose. Either Piper was having serious problems in the matrix and couldn't spare the time to pop the doors, or there was another problem. Maybe people in the hallway outside. Maybe security personnel. Maybe an alert had been declared.

The only way to find out without risking more radio traffic was to get-

"A man and a woman," Bandit said. "Up the hall. On the left."

"What're they doing?" Rico asked.

"They're bored."

"Bored like guards standing watch?"

"Maybe."

Rico gave it a minute. They couldn't afford to do anything that might give them away, but neither could they wait. Someone would find the techs they'd put down. Someone would notice an elevator apparently gone out of service. Someone would consider a bunch of seemingly unconnected events, have a sudden flash of intuition, and hit the PANICBUTTON. The longer they waited, the more likely that became. It posed a danger to Piper as well. A decker could die in the matrix. And this was a classic case of how that might come about.

The minute ticked off. Nothing changed. Rico made the unavoidable decision. "Right. We advance. Four, take left, I take right. Two and Three, stand by to jump."

Filly acknowledged.

Rico keyed his headset "Alpha, pop the doors on my mark. Counting two, one, mark."

The doors slid smoothly apart, revealing the hallway beyond, extending out maybe fifty meters. Standing in front of a doorway about halfway along on the left were a male and a female in loose-fitting gray suits and black mirrorshades.

As Rico brought his Ares into line, his smartlink put a gleaming red triangle over the male's chest. The auto thumped once. Filly's auto thumped at nearly the same instant. The male fell to his knees, then rolled onto his back. The female went down like a bag of rocks.

Thorvin's drone flashed past, humming.

Dok and Shank swung themselves forward, planted their feet on the floor of the hallway, popped their harnesses and then knelt down, training their automatics up the hallway to provide cover.

Once they were set, Rico followed them out, with Filly close behind. The two of them then turned back to tug Bandit clear of the elevator shaft. Filly reached out and popped Bandit's harness. It was a few precious moments, but that couldn't be helped. Bandit tended to do things in one of two ways, like an expert or a dunce. Left to himself, he'd probably hang there under the elevator for a couple of hours before figuring out how to get out and then actually getting around to doing it.

Rico reminded himself, not for the first time, that the shaman's strengths far outweighed his weaknesses. And everybody had weaknesses. It was built-in.

Inside the brilliant cube of the Engineering CPU, a window outlined in green suddenly opened and the giant eye of a Watcher program gazed straight into Piper's face. Things were starting to happen now, all over the Maas Intertech computer cluster. The power failures she had ordered had been noticed. Programmers and technicians were trying, without success, to get into the engineering mainframe. The security CPU had doubtless put the cluster on passive alert. It knew something serious was wrong, but it didn't know what. It needed more data.

The giant eye gazing into her face was evidence of that.

Piper drew a balloon from her jacket pocket, stretched it, blew it up, and tapped it toward the Watcher IC. The balloon undulated and expanded. The Watcher's eye drifted aside to avoid it, but couldn't. The balloon speeded up, enveloped the Watcher, then just held it. The watcher's eye moved back and forth, but drifted slowly and steadily upward-inside the balloon-toward the glaring white ceiling of the node, then just hung there, immobile.

"Security CPU requesting node-to-node interface," the chief engineer icon reported.

"Denied," Piper said. "Lock out all external systems."

"Affirmative."

The clock was running down.

The door to Condo 9-B shot open just in front of Rico's face. He stepped through and aside, dropping into a crouch. Shank followed. That was just being careful. Bandit reported the condo empty except for the master bedroom.

Two occupants. One male, one female.

Their target had company tonight, and that was no surprise. The corps could be real generous with perks. If Surikov had lacked the means or just the plain luck to find some companionship on his' own, the corp would probably provide whatever kind he required. That was how the corps worked. Threaten your spouse if you don't do the job and serve up whores when you did. Whatever got them what they wanted. That was it,

The bedroom door snapped open. Shank went first and Rico followed. A hazy, orange-tinted light surrounded the bed like a veil. Two bodies moved there. Rico's vision overlays showed him the contours of the bodies right through the veil of light and the liquid satin bedsheets. Male on top, female below.

Even as Rico brought his Ares to bear, the female looked right at him, gaped, and put a hand to her throat Rico saw the movement and guessed what it meant, but there was no way to stop her without risking hitting the man on top of her.

He couldn't risk the shot A soft bell-tone sounded. Red strips running up the corners of the room flared red. "A security condition has been initialized," a hushed female voice announced quietly from somewhere near the ceiling. "Remain calm. If this is an actual emergency, do nothing. Security personnel are responding. Do not be alarmed. If you have initialized a security condition in error, please dial one-one-one and identify yourself to the security supervisor." The slitch on the bed was wearing some kind of PANICBUTTON around her neck. Now she smiled as if self-satisfied. The male looked back over his shoulder, jerked with surprise, and rolled off the female. "Three," Rico said.

Dok moved to the bed, put a burst injector to the female's leg, and fired. The slitch exclaimed, then went limp. Rico pointed the muzzle of the Ares at the male. "Identify."

The man looked about fifty, distinguished, thinning hair and close-trimmed beard stained with gray. Some extra weight around the middle. Not a big man. Not a small one either. He gasped, drew a couple of panting breaths, stammered, "Surikov… Ansell Surikov…" He stole a glance toward the female, eyes wide with uncertainty, fear. "What is this? I insist…"