Nyx Smith - Fade to Black

Piper shared the rear bench with Shank, but she didn't seem any more aware of him than anyone or anything else. She had her axe in her lap, her head down-turned. Her long, curling black hair had slid in front of her shoulders, obscuring her face. She was past yesterday's trouble, the embarrassment he'd caused. Probably, she was praying. Talking to the kami again. Rico wished that didn't make him so uneasy. There had been a time, before he met Piper, when no one he knew paid any heed to gods till death was right around the corner, staring them in the face.

He'd known Piper for almost five years now and he still wasn't used to her praying.

Getting old. Obsolete? Maybe he'd been born that way. A couple of centuries too late. Into a world where honor meant nothing and a man's pride could be measured by the caliber of his gun. He figured he had some life left in him, regardless. Never mind what that slitch Ravage said.

"This gonna be a charity job, bossman?" Shank said gruffly. "Or we gonna get paid?"

"We'll get paid," Rico replied, lowly.

Shank and the team would get all they were due, and not just their share of the up-front money, even if Rico had to reach into his own pockets. Right now, the money was the least of his concerns.

Staying alive, at least a step ahead of the opposition, was the number one priority. After that came money. Somewhere in between staying alive and getting paid came his personal resolve to do what had to be done, find Surikov a new home, get the slag's wife busted out so that neither of them would be trapped in the ferrocrete fist of their corporate overlords. Rico just thanked his luck that he had a team he could rely on. Otherwise, everything went to scag, right out the window.

The transitway surfaced into Sector 10.

Time to get serious.

The slag in the elaborate red uniform frowned in puzzlement as Filly and Rico got out of the big blue and white sedan and moved across the sidewalk toward him. Filly didn't know his name, but she sized him up at a glance. Doorman. Very decorative but probably not a threat to anybody. Maybe a little basic training in security procedures, such as how to call for help when something bad came down.

Filly motioned at him with her chin. "Security super."

"Right inside," the doorman replied, waving a thumb at the transparex-fronted lobby of Forty East Seventy-third. "What's the name?"

"Rasheen. Mo."

"Thanks."

The doorman smiled and nodded and put his key to the lock that set the double transparex doors to the lobby sliding open. Filly stepped on inside, Rico at her right. She took the lead because she knew the drill. She'd spent nine years on patrol with Winter Systems in the Bronx. She knew the procs, the lingua, and most importantly the attitude-casual, matter-of-fact, like she had every right to do whatever the hell she was doing and there was no fragging question about it.

The lobby was big and open, a dunkfield worth of carpeting, small gardens in the corners. A broad, semicircular counter sat at the rear of the space. The slag seated behind it wore the dark gray uniform of Fargo Security. He smiled and stood up as Filly and Rico approached. From his position at the security desk, the guard could have no trouble seeing the sedan at curbside, marked for the NYPD, Inc., or the matching uniforms worn by Rico and Filly.

"Hoi, chummers," the guard said, still smiling.

"You Rasheen?" Filly inquired.

"Yes, that is right. I am called Mo. Is there something for which I can help you officers?"

"Got a little problem," Rico said, as Filly walked around to the rear of the security counter.

"I am very sorry to be hearing that," Rasheen said, glancing back and forth. "How can I be helping you, please?"

The rear of the security counter was one big console equipped with monitor screens, two keyboards, and a suite of other controls. Those controls had complete override authority for the street doors to the lobby and the lobby doors to the elevators. No one got through the lobby unless the guard here tapped the appropriate key. Piper could commandeer the console from the matrix, but that wouldn't stop Rasheen here from calling a security alert.

Every guard on site carried a radio. Rasheen had a portable right on his console. Also, Fuchi internal security had assigned a special detail to watch over Surikov's wife up on the thirty-fifth floor. That detail would go on full alert if they caught even a whisper of strange things happening. One radio call about a malfunctioning security console would do it.

Filly stepped up beside Rasheen, and "said, "Turn and face the wall."

"We got a warrant," Rico said.

Rasheen went wide-eyed. "I am begging your pardon-"

"Do it NOW Filly ordered.

"Please explaining to me-!"

Filly grabbed Rasheen's arm and twisted it. That made him turn to face the wall or lose the arm. Rasheen turned. Rico came around and relieved Rasheen of his sidearm and various defensive weapons. Filly forced Rasheen down to his knees and applied handcuffs.

"You must be erroneously arresting me!"

"I don't think so."

"Please letting me call my director!"

Rasheen would not be calling anybody.

The building at Forty East Seventy-third Street on Manhattan's Upper East Side was called the Crystal Blossom Condominiums. The mainframe running the building's utilities and monitoring security functions was a Fuchi machine, but had only the most tenuous of connections with the machines installed in the Black Towers of Fuchi-Town. It was operated by the Manhattan Property Management Corporation, a Fuchi subsidiary. Code Orange security. That was tough, but not nearly as tough as the Black Towers' Code Red cluster.

The System Access Node to the Crystal Blossom mainframe looked like the anteroom to a bank vault. The iconic room was gray, the vault door gold. This was standard matrix imagery and it indicated little or nothing about the security status of the system beyond.

Piper entered the node with her masking utility on-line. The guards in their sky blue Fuchi blazers didn't react at all to her presence. From inside her jacket, Piper drew out a huge magnifying glass and examined the guards' program code. The guards-mere access IC-still did not react. Piper drew out a pair of glowing red and green lollipops the size of tennis rackets, each winking with the legend, in orange, ENTRY REQUEST. She held the pops out to the guards, and now they noticed her. They looked at the lollipops and accepted them. And began licking them.

They would continue licking forever-caught in a virtual loop.

Piper drew out a pouch, marked Movable Holes. The hole she selected took the form of a slim black disk whose diameter was about equal to the height of her iconic self. She slapped the disk against the vault door. READY began winking in neon red at the center of the disk. She stepped through-through the hole, through the vault door-and into the dataline beyond.

She had the entire Crystal Blossom system under her command in something just under a millisecond. It was more than just "too easy."

Kami save them. It seemed impossible.

The doorman started tapping on the transparex doors out front and lifted his hands as if to ask what was going on. The doors wouldn't respond to his key. That would be Piper's doing.

One of the elevators dinged, and a uniformed guard came walking into the lobby. He was dark-skinned like Rasheen and the look on his face immediately turned to shocked surprise.

"What is happening here?" he asked, voice lilting wildly up and down.

Rasheen blurted something in some foreign lingua.

The newcomer stopped, looking back and forth. "Why have you arresting my brother?"

"Come're," Filly said.

"Answer please!"

Something from the security console started bleeping. Filly let Rico worry about that. She stepped toward the newcomer, Rasheen's "brother." She laid a hand on the butt of her sidearm. Any normal corporate would take that as a hint and act accordingly. "Don't give us any trouble," she said adamantly. "Put your hands on the wall and shut up."