Gavin Smith - The Age of Scorpio

Their first connection to real-world criminality was with a Korean game gang that they contracted out debt collection to. This was also their first connection to offline PKs – player kills.

According to Control, the DAYP recruited from top-echelon game nerds. The super-intelligent, many of them dropouts from top universities. They were recruited online after the DAYP used gameplay to psychometrically measure them, targeting excluded, disaffected sociopaths capable of doing the sort of things that would be required of them. Recently their games had become more sophisticated and capable of influencing people towards such behaviour.

It would almost be funny, except that through dealing in experimental software, hacking, upmarket games discovered via industrial espionage and experimental hardware, the DAYP had come across S-tech and L-tech. Worse, they had learned how to utilise it.

Then the DAYP started seriously hunting for it. They searched the most accurate conspiracy sites, the darkest, dangerous and often most secure parts of the web, looking for info on the tech. Each time they found it, they attempted to replicate it, augment themselves and their technology and then sell it. They were close to controlling the black market in S- and L-tech.

Their dominance of this black market had required a degree of ruthlessness. Initially, influenced by a type of computer game called a first-person shooter, they had used external contractors to do their dirty work and secure the tech for themselves. These contractors were normally security companies who used ex-special forces personnel. However, with access to such a high level of technology, they had started to augment themselves and do their own dirty work with violent enthusiasm.

They were implicated in thefts, murders, rape, slavery and numerous other crimes. Du Bois had seen men given licence to do what they wanted before, but they had not been given the power of near-gods on earth. The DAYP were thought to be based in America, though it seemed that some of them at least were operating in Portsmouth and interested in Natalie Luckwicke.

Du Bois was angry that he had not been briefed on them. Control had told him that his direct experience had made him more useful in dealing with the City of Brass and agents of the Eggshell, though more and more du Bois was starting to believe that the Eggshell was a myth. If they had ever existed they were long gone. It hadn’t been so long ago that the Circle would have never allowed such parasites to get their hands on S- and L-tech. He wished that he had been allowed to deal with these spoilt, evil child fantasists a long time ago.

He got up, poured himself a healthy measure of Scotch and moved to the window. He leaned against the frame, his face lit up by the harsh sodium lights that illuminated the wet concrete and brick of the base. He could see one of the later buildings that had been added to the military facility. Despite being a typically ugly utilitarian design, there was something of the art deco about it. It reminded him of a film he had seen many years ago about a failed utopia. This thought made him smile humourlessly. Beyond that he could see the lights of the city.

Did it matter? Yes. What the DAYP did was wrong. He was not a righteous man, not any longer if even a shred of what Hamad had said was true, but even if the Circle was corrupt they were not unnecessarily cruel. There was no pleasure in the suffering of others. Like every animal they did what they had to, to survive. Though it looked like that was over. If the prodigal had been here it looked like she was dead.

Du Bois took out his own phone. A normal phone. This one wasn’t filled with liquid soft/hardware many iterations in advance of what was thought to be the cutting edge of computer and communications technology. He knew that Control monitored his ‘private’ phone as well. It was more a symbol of separation between his work and what he could only jokingly call a private life.

He cycled through the few names on his contact list and stared at Alexia’s. He put his thumb over the dial key. His work phone sent the text straight to his internal systems, flagged as very urgent. He narrowed his eyes, his vision magnifying the city below him. He could make out the flashing lights from the emergency-services vehicles.

Some of her co-workers had told her that the fish and chip shop on Castle Street, just down from the Colonial Arms, was the best in the city. Beth had practically run down Elm Grove to Campbell Road, where Uday and Maude’s flat was, to stop the three fish suppers she’d bought from getting too cold.

It was a funny thing about Portsmouth and Southsea that Beth was coming to realise. Perhaps it was because it was an island and space was limited, but it didn’t seem to be a case of good neighbourhoods and bad neighbourhoods, it wasn’t even a case of good streets and bad streets. It was more good house, bad house. Everyone was mixed in together. Students lived next to ‘nice’ middle-class families, who lived next to drug dealers and other career criminals.

With a can of one of the better bitters, the fish and chips had tasted amazing to Beth. Uday had looked at the greasy food with some disdain but Maude had teased him until he’d eaten it.

Both of them had then taken some considerable time to get ready – much to Beth’s amusement. Beth practically had to fight off Maude’s attempt to put make-up on her. The getting-ready process had involved booze from the off-licence on the corner of Outram Road and Victoria Road North, because it was cheaper than drinking in the pub, and a volume war between Maude and Uday’s disparate musical tastes. Beth tended to side more with Maude but only a little.

Then on to a crowded pub on Albert Road. They had to shout to be heard, and spent the first hour standing up until Beth managed to intimidate some kids off a table, much to Maude’s embarrassment and Uday’s amusement. Several rounds in, Beth had stopped worrying about how much of the money that Ted had given her she was spending and how she didn’t recognise any of the music, and was starting to believe the fiction of normality she was trying to construct.

Beth was studying the wooden panels on the wall, each filled with pictures of butterfly statues, girls with rabbit heads, VW Beetles… They were odd but Beth was slowly coming to the conclusion she liked them. She liked that someone cared enough to take the time to decorate the pub like this. Though she wasn’t sure it justified the price of drinks in the place.

Beth had noticed Maude get a few looks and there had been whispers behind hands. Maude had pretended not to notice. Uday had looked relieved when some drunk arsehole came over to the table and asked Maude if she was the porn girl, and Beth had been the one to see him off with some serious threats. Beth guessed Uday usually had to do that. She suspected Uday’s comments would have been more cutting.

‘… and then we can find a nice girl for Beth.’ She hadn’t been paying any attention, but the sound of her name broke into her art appreciation.

‘I’m not a lesbian,’ she said just a little too loudly, getting some looks of amusement from nearby tables. She was a little pissed off but saw Uday was smiling mischievously.

‘Are you sure? Then why’d you dress like one?’ he asked.

‘Stop it!’ Maude scolded him.

‘Perhaps clothes and make-up and stuff aren’t as important to me as they are to other people.’

Uday clamped his hand to his heart dramatically. ‘Oh my gosh, you are so right. I am so shallow. I shall immediately change my ways and start wearing dowdy things. What is that, homeless chic?’

Beth felt herself colouring. She hated conversations like this. She flicked Uday a V-sign.

‘Don’t mind him,’ Maude told Beth between giggles. ‘He’s just being a bitch.’