Kelly shut off the hot water, stepped out of the shower and wrapped herself in a towel. When she wiped the fog off the mirror she leaned forward and tilted her head to examine the bluish-purple bruises that had formed around her cheekbones and jaw. Her shoulders had raw pink splotches around the cuts and scrapes, but her skin was still red and flush from the shower. She massaged her knuckles, drank a glass of water and cleaned her teeth. Then she cleaned and dressed her more severe wounds, specifically the slashes she received from that switchblade that had started bleeding again under the hot water. Finally, she got dressed; pulling on a pair of cargo pants and a flannel shirt.
Things were quiet downstairs. Santiago read some documents from a glass tablet at the bar while Penelope sat beside him and ate a bowl of cereal. Kelly stepped behind the bar and poured herself a mug of black coffee. I should ask Santiago to get us a serving droid, she thought. Maybe later. She looked over at Dunstan, who had turned an entire booth into a computer lab equipped with four monitors and an assortment of other tech that Kelly didn’t bother to understand. She knew that he intended to use this tech to hack into Julia Van Buren’s Neural Interface, she didn’t care how as long as it worked.
“The good news is that it’s doable,” Dunstan explained when she went over to him. “It’s gonna take some time though so get comfy.”
“ETA?”
Dunstan shrugged. “Hard to say. A few days?”
She tapped him on the shoulder. “Good work. Send a report to Connors but—” she glanced quickly at Santiago and lowered her voice “—don’t mention anything about Julia’s informant.”
Kelly was in her room practising slow Tai Chi when Santiago knocked on her door and asked if she’d give him a hand setting up a perimeter around town. One high-ranking cult member was dead, another was believed to be dead, and in two days they’d heard nothing from Anton or his representatives. It was time to go on the defensive.
“Does it work?” Santiago asked Kelly as they stepped outside and walked towards the garage down the road. “The Tai Chi? I never got into it myself.”
“To be honest I don’t know,” Kelly replied.
Santiago opened the roller door of the garage. On one side were two quadbikes and a bundle of tall metal stakes with sensors attached to their tips.
“I think I first started learning Tai Chi when I was in high school,” Kelly went on. “I used to fight competitively; Karate, Jiu Jitsu, then Tai Chi and kickboxing when I got older.”
“I could tell right away that you were a fighter.” Santiago grinned.
Kelly leaned against one of the quadbikes and said, “So, what are we doing?”
Santiago handed her one of the bundles. “Take these and stick them right around the northern perimeter of the town, about ten meters apart. Make sure you activate them first.” He demonstrated by flicking a switch that activated a blinking red light. “Try to keep them inconspicuous. Then, if anyone comes our way uninvited, your man Dunstan will be the first to know.”
The task was easy enough. Kelly was skilled with all kinds of ATVs, though she preferred bikes. But she cruised from point to point, finding a rhythm in driving forward, activating the sensor and sticking it in the ground. In an hour she was finished and she rendezvoused with Santiago at the garage. He grabbed her a beer from the minifridge and they sat in silence on the hood of a decommissioned transport vehicle. Kelly decided she liked Santiago; he seemed straightforward, as decent as they get.
And then there was Penelope, who strolled into the garage without a care in the world carrying a little black cube and a screwdriver.
“Dad, I fixed it!” she cried, handing Santiago a miniature holographic projector. Santiago beamed as he took the device and switched it on. He ruffled Penelope’s hair and told her how talented she was. Kelly’s still had trouble understanding the little girl. Penelope seemed out of place, and remarkably talented for her age. Her beautiful eyes lit up as an idea swept into her mind. “I’ll show Dunstan!”
When Penelope was gone Santiago sighed and said to Kelly, “Go on, ask.”
“I just don’t understand—”
“What she’s doing here, at a time like this?” Santiago finished. “It’s a long story, but the short version is… her mother’s gone and there’s no one else I trust to care for her. Penelope isn’t like other kids, she’s smart.”
“So you just travel around? What about her friends? Her school?” Kelly paused. “I’m sorry, I’m being impolite. Both my parents were in the army so I lived in a lot of different cities. I mean a lot.”
“Well, you’re young, do you have kids?”
Kelly couldn’t help but laugh—she didn’t mean to, it just came out, much to her own surprise. “I do not.”
“I learned pretty quickly that the only person I trust to keep my daughter safe is me,” Santiago went on. He glanced forward longingly. “I hope someday soon Penelope can be just like all the other kids.”
“God forbid she doesn’t turn out like me,” Kelly remarked, and then immediately regretted it, but Santiago said nothing.
“No, in fact I intend to make sure she has a happy and normal life.”
The conversation lulled for a moment. Kelly finished her beer.
“Hey, can I ask you something?” she said.
“Go for it.”
“How do you know you’re making the right choices? With Penelope, that is. How were you not scared shitless of raising a kid?”
Santiago chuckled. “Oh, no doubt I was scared. Penelope was never planned and there was no way I ready to raise her. I spent the better part of a decade thinking I’d fucked everything up. But in the end do you know how I knew that I had made the right decisions?”
Kelly shrugged. “How?”
“When we moved to Arizona one of the first things I did was take her to the Grand Canyon; you should have seen the way her face lit up! I was terrified up bringing her up in such a big and scary world but I tell you, that view was absolutely beautiful. Seeing her happy like that – that’s how I know I’m on the right track.”
“What happens when your big scary world is all around you? Say I wanted… I mean, how could someone like me…?”
“So you do want kids?”
“I mean, I’ve thought about it, a little, that maybe one day I’d adopt, or something. The thing is, I’ve killed people. I’ve done all kinds of things I think I’d rather forget but I don’t regret any of it. I followed my orders, I served my country, I protected my life and the lives of my squad. I do what I was made to do, but then I think about what happens after, and I don’t see a picket fence at the end of that path.”
Santiago stood up and tossed his empty beer bottle into a bucket. “It’s a tricky path no matter which way you go, but you’re smart, you’ll be fine.”
“You’re a wise man, Santiago. I should head back, check on Dunstan.”
When Kelly returned to the hotel she found with some surprise that Dunstan had set up two VR decks—essentially office chairs covered with duct tape and wires, and nodes designed to attach to the cranium. Dunstan spotted Kelly and began plugging himself in.
“Good, you’re here,” he said.
“Have you found something?”
“I think so.” He gestured for Kelly to connect herself to the other chair. “Plug in and I’ll show you.”
Kelly had used VR dozens, maybe hundreds of times in the army for training and recovery; but never one as makeshift as this. There were dangers to using unstable VR servers with bad connections.
“It’s quite safe,” Dunstan urged.
Kelly plugged in.
Slowly, gently, her senses faded to black, and the crisp aroma of sea air found its way into her mind. She tasted salt upon the splash of crashing waves and the cool sea mist caressing her face. Then she felt coarse sand between her toes, smooth pebbles and sea glass rolling back and forth as the tide washed around her ankles. Her pants were rolled up halfway around her calves and she wore a tank top under a familiar leather jacket. She inspected the sleeves and realised she had owned this jacket when she was a teenager.
Every mind is wired a little differently; while a VR server is loading the mind is taken to a place known as the Construct. For Kelly this place was a beach, for others it may be a room, or a field, a hallway, or any place imprinted deep within the mind.
In a bright folding motion the Construct disappeared and became an enclosed room with fierce blue lighting. The rest was completely bare until Dunstan manifested from nothing.
“That won’t do,” he remarked, and accessing a terminal on his wrist he selected a more natural lighting for the room. “There.”
“What are we doing here?”
In reply Dunstan waved his hand and a holographic map of the US appeared before them. Dunstan zoomed in on their general area in Arizona and said, “Cherry van Buren owns a chain of nightclubs all around the surrounding states.”
The map zoomed out and little blips appeared indicating the locations of a dozen nightclubs.
“She’s also been buying dedicated servers and setting up Verclubs.”
“Verclubs?”
“Virtual nightclubs.”
“Ah.” Kelly waited for Dunstan to go on. “So she’s well-established. I take it she’s doing something with her new businesses?”
“Well, she’s violating privacy laws, for one.”
Kelly shrugged. “No surprises there.”
“But it’s how she’s doing it that concerns me. I don’t have a lot of proof but I think Cherry has found a way to pair VR tech with the Neural Interface. Imagine a VR that you can’t turn off, and she’s running the show. Lieutenant, I think Cherry is using this technology to warp the realities of potential members of the cult; she’s using private data stored in their interfaces to… not necessarily brainwash them, but at least nudge them towards a certain direction.”
“VR explains why Connors couldn’t find any mass cultist gatherings, they were all online,” Kelly said. “Okay, so she’s overriding the user’s connection to their neural interface and then manipulating them with VR, but I still don’t understand how she could sever the brain’s connection to create an opening… unless…”
“Hex,” said Dunstan. With a twirl of his hand a digital file on the cyber-drug appeared in front of them. “Remember what that doctor was saying? The drug disabled synaptic firing in certain parts of the brain; it was creating a back door in the user’s defences.”
Kelly crossed her arms and said, “Johnathan was breaking them down with Hex and Cherry is building them up with VR. That’s how they’re creating their following. Okay, we’ll have to get this to Santiago and the interrogation team to see if they can use it against Johnathan. I guess this is good news; now that we know what she’s doing we can work on a plan to stop it.”
“That’s not all the news that I have,” said Dunstan.
He pulled up the same map of the region but this time the pale blue hologram was splayed with red circles.
Kelly felt something tighten in her stomach, and seeing as she was in virtual, it probably had something to do with what she was seeing.
“Gustav Lynwood has finally gone militant,” Dunstan reported. “That is, if these projections are to be believed, and I don’t see why they shouldn’t be.”
“What are his movements?”
“Acquisitions.” Dunstan pulled up files of financial reports and resources from locations and corporations all around the Mid-West. “According to Julia’s data Lynwood’s mercenaries have already assaulted groups of protestors and other forms of opposition to the cult. Now that their influence has spread Anton plans on using Lynwood’s forces to steal the rest of the land, money and resources that his cult needs to fully establish itself.”
Kelly shook her head. “He wouldn’t make a play that obvious, he’ll expose himself.”
“Lieutenant, I’m not so sure he cares anymore.”
Upon hearing this news Kelly finally felt what had been lurking at the back of her mind since Miller died: that she was fighting a losing battle. She didn’t know if Anton intended to start a war with the US government, but even until then how could three people hold back the storm? She pinched her brow and said, “Shit… tell me that’s all there is.”
“There’s more,” Dunstan said grimly. “But I… I’m not sure how to say it. This is the bad news, anyway.”
“This is the bad news? What the hell is it?”
“I followed a data stream stored in Julia’s interface that confirms the cult had an informant inside the CIA, or at the very least an anonymous benefactor with access to high-level government secrets has been leaking intelligence to all the wrong people.”
“Jesus fuck, you think it’s Connors?”
Dunstan quickly shook his head. “I didn’t say that. But it could be. Why do you think I’m telling you this in VR?”
Kelly nodded. “You made the right call. Now, all we need is some good news.”
“There is one last thing,” Dunstan added. “Though, I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, in fact I’m not even sure what it is.” He pulled up the digital file labelled Project 7 and Kelly looked carefully and the flickering symbol of a lock placed in its centre. “The other files on Julia’s interface had a fairly complex encryption but they weren’t impossible to unlock. Whoever put this here was not Julia Van Buren; their security systems are more advanced than anything I’ve seen before.”
“Project 7,” Kelly murmured. “Will you be able to unlock it?”
“I’ll do my best, Lieutenant, but it could take time.”
“What do you suppose it is?”
Dunstan thought for a moment, and said, “It’s hard to say, but I don’t think it’s just anything.”
“I agree. Whatever this may be I’d say it’s important to Anton and the cult.”
Dunstan pulled up the rough schematic of the Neural Interface that he made from studying Julia’s model. “There’s still so many things we don’t know about this technology. This file could have the information we need to finally figure it out.”
“Or…”
At last Kelly found a glimmer of hope.
“It could have what we need to bring Anton down.”
A few days dragged on with little excitement or action. Kelly didn’t want to risk going out into the field unnecessarily while the cult were tightening their grip on the region. She mostly stuck to the hotel; training, drinking and reading. Whenever she was needed she’d help Santiago perform some task for the benefit of the town, like taking out a group of raiders who were stealing supply shipments, or repairing a water valve to ensure they town still had fresh water. Kelly began to feel that she was staving off the apocalypse, one move at a time, and that was an unsettling thought.
The rest of her time she spent researching the cult. She’d created a board with the faces of all the top members on it. And now she sat in a booth at the hotel with a laptop and a cup of coffee in front of her. Gustav Lynwood was on the move and Kelly needed to put a stop to him. The research was slow and Kelly took few breaks. She mostly just read files that Dunstan provided for her. So far she learned that Gustav had only recently associated with the Harrell’s, that he was indeed the head of a mercenary group, and most interestingly, that the cult wasn’t nearly paying him enough for his services.
Kelly leaned towards her computer. She felt that she’d been staring at Gustav’s profile for hours.
“Why work so cheap?” she murmured. “What do you owe him?”
She snapped back to reality when Santiago stepped into the room with Penelope trotting along happily behind.
“Hey guys,” he addressed Kelly and Dunstan. “I’m heading out of town for the rest of the day to deliver some supplies to one of our teams out in the field. Would one of you mind watching over Penelope for me?”
Dunstan raised his hand. “I volunteer to not do that.” He leaned out of his booth, a sly smile on his face. “Lieutenant, you got this one? I am technically making better use of my time here.”
Santiago gave Kelly a questioning look and she had to remind herself that she was a soldier and a lieutenant, and it was no good shying away like this. She corrected herself.
“Of course,” she said, though a little reluctantly.
“Great,” said Santiago. “I’ll see you tonight. You’ll be fine.”
When Santiago left, Kelly figured there was nothing wrong with continuing her work while also keeping an eye on Penelope inside the hotel. The little girl floated around, from the pool table to the bar to the lounge. At one point Penelope was reading the label on a bottle of whiskey. Here, Kelly admitted defeat. Nothing was wrong, but she felt she wasn’t doing a good job. She stood up and joined Dunstan in his booth.
“What do a do?” she demanded.
“You’re fine,” Dunstan replied. “All Agent Santiago asked was that we keep an eye on her. As long as she doesn’t get bored—”
Even as he spoke Penelope called out in an excited voice from behind the bar: “Kelly, this box has a shotgun in it!”
A chill ran down Kelly’s spine.
“The gun safe was locked, right?” she asked Dunstan.
“Pretty damn sure,” he replied.
Kelly called over to Penelope. “Please don’t touch that!”
“Okay, listen,” said Dunstan, seriously. “I’m ten years older than my little sister. You want to keep her in check, the trick is to keep their little brains occupied.”
Kelly thought about this for a moment. Play a game, maybe take her for a walk, ask her what her favourite dinosaur was.
Sure, I can handle this.
“Got it.”
Kelly stood up, took Penelope’s hand and led her away from the bar, and looking around for something to do, noticed the chess board in the lounge.
“Do you know how to play chess?” Kelly asked.
“Do you?” Penelope replied.
Kelly smiled. “I like to think so. Come on, let’s have a game.”
They sat down in the lounge and Kelly set up her own pieces and then Penelope’s. Kelly played whites and made the first move. Penelope responded accordingly. She wasn’t just moving her pieces at random, she had obviously played with her father in the past. But to Kelly’s relief this strange little girl at least looked interested, and Kelly’s lips curled into a subtle smile.
“So the gun safe was locked when you found it, right?” said Kelly.
“Nope,” Penelope replied in an aloof kind of way.
Kelly was taken aback. “Oh, okay.” She wasn’t sure if Penelope was telling the truth, but why would a ten-year-old girl lie about that? Who would have left the safe unlocked? Santiago could have given her the code, Kelly supposed. Still, it was weird.
“Well, it doesn’t matter.” Kelly moved her bishop to protect her king. They played a few moves in silence and then Kelly went on the offensive, taking a few pawns with her knights and rooks. She lost a few herself, too. “You’re good at this.”
“So are you,” said Penelope. “You think like a soldier and a commander. I can see why they made you a Lieutenant.” Penelope make a few more moves, a strategy that Kelly completely missed opened up in front of her. “Check,” Penelope announced.
“What the—”
“I’m actually pretty good at chess,” Penelope smiled.
Kelly’s eyes scanned the board. “Clearly.” She blushed, feeling a little embarrassed. In a few more moves Penelope had won the game.
“And checkmate!”
Once the game was finished Kelly told Penelope to wait outside while she returned to her booth to pack up her laptop and research materials. Dunstan came by and nudged her with his elbow.
“That was nice of you, letting her win,” he said.
Kelly could only laugh awkwardly. “Yeah, I guess.”
Kelly shuffled her feet uncomfortably again as she stood outside the Hotel with Penelope in silence. The little girl held her hands behind her back and swayed from side to side, not looking at anything in particular. Then she raised her pretty blue eyes at Kelly, and the Lieutenant almost took a step back.
“So, what should we do now?” Penelope asked.
Kelly shrugged. “I’m going to level with you, kid, I don’t know what I’m doing.”
To Kelly’s surprise Penelope smiled. “I know,” she said. “Dad said you needed a break. Come on, what’s something you’d want to do?”
“Me?”
Kelly looked around. She figured this kid was getting weirder and weirder the more time they spent together.
“Santiago wanted you to spend time with me?” Kelly asked.
“Yep.” Penelope continued to smile.
And just then an idea came to Kelly’s mind. She took Penelope to the garage where in one of the side rooms were some bows designed for professional archery; a compound bow that was just about Kelly’s size, and a smaller recurve bow for Penelope.
“Uh, we need a target.” Kelly fished some cans from a waste basket. “Perfect. Okay, I know a spot.”
She led Penelope to an empty carpark behind the hotel. Grass and shrubs were beginning to sprout from cracks in the concrete. But the space was quiet and they had plenty of room. Kelly set up the cans on a piece of railing near the back wall of the hotel, then placed an old sheet of plywood against the wall to avoid damaging the arrows. Penelope learned quickly. Kelly showed her how to grip the bow and properly knock and draw the arrows. Kelly left Penelope to practice and had a go herself with the compound bow, standing as far back as she could. Her arrow whistled through the air and pinned the can to the wall.
“Amazing shot!” Penelope cried. “How did you do that?”
Kelly laughed. “Practice. Lots of it.”
Kelly was about to observe Penelope make another shot when her phone buzzed: a call from Santiago. She answered.
“Yeah?”
“Are you with Penelope?” Santiago’s voice was strained with panic.
“Yes, of course. What’s going on?”
“Gustav. I don’t know how but he knows where you are. He’s sending an assault team.”
Kelly immediately took Penelope’s hand, urged her to drop the bow, and walked back towards the hotel.
“How much time do we have?” she asked. “I’ll take Penelope. Tell us where to go.”
Her phone buzzed again and displayed an alarm and a video feed of a solitary armed figure approaching the town.
“No good. He’s already got scouts watching your perimeter. You’ll be safer where you are.”
“We’ll be trapped.”
“Listen, I’m on my way. I’ve got some people with me. The town is defendable, our best bet is to hold up.”
“Santiago, he has an army.”
“Just look after Penelope until I get there. You keep her safe, you hear me?”
Kelly took a deep breath. Already in her mind she was making plans for fortifying the town. But with her, Dunstan, and maybe a handful of volunteers, how long would they last?
“Understood,” she told Santiago. “Get here as quick as you can.”
She ended the call and marched into the hotel.
ns 172.70.135.92da2