A Simple Job

Her panting breath and pounding heart filled her ears as she sprinted down the alley, drowning out the heavy footsteps following too close behind.  She leapt a fallen trash can, dodged between hanging sheets and crashed into a stair railing.  Gasping for breath, the girl heaved herself back to her feet and threw herself forward.  The end of the alley was near and salvation, such as it was, was within grasping distance.

A meaty hand closed around a handful of hair flying behind her and yanked.  She lost her balance and cried out at the sharp pain in her scalp. Then, tumbling wildly, she skidded out of the alley, across the sidewalk, and slammed into the side of a parked car.  Safe at last.

She brushed off the concerned people clustering around her and managed a glance at the man who was chasing her.  He had stopped in the shadow of the alley, massive chest heaving from his chase, glowering at her, shaking brown hair from his fingers.

As she left behind the knot of people staring after her, her breath started to come easier.  With one hand she unconsciously felt the side of her leg through her pants.  The implanted cyberware there was made of duraplast, a little run and tumble wouldn’t hurt it, but the danger of what it held being damaged was very real.  She needed to get to a safe place and verify the chip wasn’t damaged.

A musical tone sounded in her ear – message incoming.  Without slowing her rapid walk, the girl opened a channel to accept the incoming call.  A face appeared in front of her, a holographic impression conveyed directly to her optic nerve via wetware.

“Rodney, what the hell do you want?”  She spoke subvocally, her lips and tongue barely moving, just enough for the wetware to pick up the motions.

“Leah, how nice to see you.”

Asshole. “I’m busy, Rodney.  Make it fast.”

“Word on the streets has it there’s a bounty for your cargo.”

“And?”  Like she hadn’t already figured that out.

“I hope you weren’t planning on making your drop.”

“I was.”

“Bad idea.”

“Got a better one?”

“Skip town, skip the drop, whatever.  Just don’t show up.”

Rodney signed off without further pleasantries.  Leah started swearing to herself.  Now what was she going to do?  The duraplast pouch in her leg suddenly seemed to be full of lead, rather than the little datachip it did contain.

If they were watching her drop site, they were probably watching her apartments too, which meant her guns were unavailable.  Without a gun, making the drop wasn’t an option.

The bustling street about her gave a false sense of security that she tried to shake off.  Time was ticking and even Saturday night traffic would dry up eventually.  That gave her about an hour to get a gun.  Fortunately, even in this over-regulated city, guns were available if you knew who to ask.  Leah knew who to ask.

…

“Up, Fatty,” Leah ordered, “on your feet.”  Fatty started as Leah grabbed his collar and jerked his face to within inches of her own.  “Now, Fatty.”

“Wah?” he mumbled, still mostly asleep.  “Leah?  What are you doing here?”

“Guns.  I need a gun.  Now.”

“You know there’s a bounty on you?”

“Actually it’s on my cargo.  But yes.  Are you going to help me?”

“Do you know how much it is?  I could live for years off it.”

“If you don’t start opening your safe right now, I’ll gut you where you stand then take your guns.”

“Yeah, yeah, no need for threats.  Were you followed here?”  Fatty wasn’t actually fat, the nickname was an unfortunate relic from high school; as far as Leah knew, Fatty was never actually overweight.  As he talked, he got up and turned to face the wall.  His hands twitched occasionally, tiny controlled spasms that would go almost unnoticed anywhere else.  The telltales confirmed that he was working through the security systems guarding the safe.

“How the hell should I know?  If you don’t want your house getting shot up in a gunfight, you might want to hurry, though.”

“This is a delicate process and your talking doesn’t help.”

Leah sighed and paced around the room, waiting for pounding footsteps to come racing up the stairwell.  They knew where she was, that was certain, but how fast someone could get here who was willing to rush Fatty’s security might give her enough time.  The man had more illegal automated defense systems installed in his apartment than a defense contractor.

If she had any luck, they wouldn’t form a complete cordon around the apartment and she would be able to slip out and only have to kill a couple thugs in the process.

“I’m assuming you’ve got the juice for this?”

“You know me, Fatty.  I’ve got it.”

“You runners always have juice.  Not that I envy you.  Okay, safe’s open.  Take your pick.”  The wall Fatty was standing in front of flickered and disappeared, revealing a hidden room lined on three sides with every legal firearm and some thoroughly illegal ones.

“Something simple.  I need to move fast.”

Fatty walked into the room and picked out a pistol.  “Here.  Targeting system links to your neural net, projecting a crosshair so you know where it’s pointing.  Fires depleted rounds, nothing fancy but it’ll get the job done.”  Fatty walked out of the brightly lit room and tossed her the handgun, sleek and vicious-looking.

Leah caught the gun and felt it automatically sync its targeting system to her optic wetware.  “This is not a cheap gun, Fatty.”  A red crosshair appeared and tracked across the room as she moved the gun.

“No, but I suspect you’re gonna need it.  I could give you a Special, but I know you hate ‘em.”

“You’re right.” Leah sighed and walked over to Fatty’s desk.  “How much you want for it?”

“A G.  Round it down.”

“You’re killing me.”

“You’re the one who came here needing a gun now, now, now,” Fatty shrugged with a smile.

Leah pressed the back of her wrist to the scanner on Fatty’s desk and transferred the funds.  “Got any extra ammo?”

“Damn, girl, how many people do you think you’ll need to kill?”

“How many people are chasing after me?”

“With a bounty like the one you got… I’ll give you the extra ammo for free.”

“Thanks Fatty.”  Leah caught the tossed clip.  She worked her wrist and popped open a concealed compartment implanted in her left forearm.  Deftly, she dropped the clip in and snapped it shut.

“Leah…”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m not talking about the people trying to kill you.”

“Neither am I.  I said I was fine.”

“How much now?”

“Just the forearm is new.  It got shot off a month ago.  I didn’t have a choice.”

“You’re walking a fine line.  I’d hate to see you go wired.”

“It’ll take more than a new arm to set me off, Fatty.”

“That’s what they all say.  I’d rather have you armless than a cyber-zombie.”

“When’s the last time you heard of a zombie?  They’re more careful these days.”

“That’s the problem, you never hear of them anymore.  They happen, but they’re hidden.”

“Thanks for the gun, Fatty.  I better split.”

“Come back when you’re done.  We’ll have a drink or something.”

“Sure thing.  You have a back door?”

“On your left.  And Leah?”

“What?”

“Be careful.”

…

Leah pressed herself against the wall and tried to still her hammering heart.  The chemical smell of propellant filled the air, burning her sinuses.  There was a dead guy at her feet, a small puckered bullet hole entering just under his left cheekbone adding some spice to his otherwise mundane features.

Leah tucked an escaped strand of hair back out of her eyes and darted across a hallway juncture.  Sporadic gunfire came from the hallway as she ran across, but none of it aimed at her in particular.  A couple bullets thumped into the lathe and plaster wall, sending sprays of old crumbling plaster into the already choked air.

Her pursuers had long since lost her and were having it out with the inmates of the rather rundown apartment complex.  Those last bullets could have come from anyone.  In this neighborhood, you fought for your living space or lost your home to the squatter with the biggest gun.  Armed intruders running through the hallways were asking for trouble, and a lot of it, which is one of the reasons why Leah chose this particular apartment to hide in.

They knew she was in here.  Hell, they probably had trackers on her by now.  But knowing where somebody was and getting to them were two different things.  Right now, Leah needed something to eat, a shower, and some quality alone time to reset the self-destruct timer on the datachip she was carrying.

If she remembered correctly, there was an apartment on the fourth floor that the owner didn’t keep locked.  And since the owner happened to get killed in a barfight two nights ago, Leah figured it might be a good place to shack up for a couple hours.  If she could find the tracking bugs it would be a moment’s work to throw them off her scent.

Until the trackers were gone, though, she would never make it out of the city alive.  Her bounty was probably so high even the cops, crooked as they were, would be shooting for her.  Once she offloaded the chip the bounty would evaporate, though.  Small consolation.

A door opened across the hall from Leah and she leveled her gun at the head that poked out.  “I’m leaving.  I don’t want any trouble.”  The head disappeared and the door slammed shut, followed by the click of a deadbolt and the sliding noise of a door chain being put into place.

More gunfire and Leah took the opportunity to run for the stairs.  The stairwell was quiet and she bounded up two flights to the fourth floor.  She peered out into the hallway and found it empty, both of thugs and of tenants.  Not surprising since gunfire still erupted sporadically below.

Walking normally, Leah moved down the hallway, scanning the doors, trying to remember what number the guy had said his apartment was.  She passed the door then stopped and turned back.  There it was, 452.

She put her hand on the knob then jerked it back, whistling softly.  There was more than just a little security on this place.  Either that guy in the bar was lying and this wasn’t his place, or he was trying to get her killed.

Well, she didn’t have anywhere else to go.  She placed her hand back on the knob and pulled up the security schematics on her visual interface.  In this city, just having the interface installed was enough to get her thrown in jail.  Using it might as well be a death sentence.  Like she cared.

It was the work of a minute to find the central node and disconnect it from the rest of the circuit.  The door opened of its own accord and Leah slipped into the room and shut the door quietly behind her.  Reconnecting the security node and adding her personal circuit was much quicker and only took her a few seconds.  It would take something of a genius to open that door now without serious and painful consequences.

The place was a mess and definitely a bachelor’s pad.  It was also just as definitely abandoned.  The freezer was open and the sheen of ice on the floor beneath it must have taken days to form.  Leah stepped over scattered cardboard food containers, empty soda cans and strewn magazines to the freezer and shut the door.

A quick tour of the single bedroom and empty bathroom satisfied Leah that the apartment was clear and she relaxed for the first time that day.  There were things that had to be done, things that couldn’t be put off any longer, even though the urgency was gone.

She returned to the living room and with a sweep of an arm, cleared off the sofa and deposited its clutter onto the floor.  A glance at the sticky, unidentifiable goo splattered on one of the cushions convinced her to flip them.  To her surprise, they were almost untouched on the other side and she sat without further misgivings.

Quick fingers ran up the outer seam on her left pant leg and found the hidden zipper head.  She pulled down and opened a slit six inches long mid-thigh.  As always, the realness of her cybernetic leg tugged a smile from her lips.  She was born with a crippling deformity and the new leg let her live a normal life ever since her mom sprang for it on her sixteenth birthday.

The years following had not been kind and Leah’s list of replacement body parts steadily grew until she had as many cybernetic pieces as flesh and blood.  Her entire left leg, including half the hip, right leg from the knee down, right arm from elbow down, left shoulder, lung and ribcage, left arm, right eye, right half of her skull, liver and heart were all cybernetic.  42% cyber, 58% human.  By rights, she should have died many times over.  The life of a runner was rife with danger.

Leah opened the hidden compartment in her thigh and drew a foam-wrapped package from the tiny slot.  Moving slowly now, she unwrapped the package and revealed the datachip.  The contents of the datachip were unknown to her, as always.  She was paid to pick it up from an anonymous source and deliver it to an anonymous receiver.  She was not paid to know what it was she carried, or who her contacts were.

She drew a datapad from her pocket and slipped the chip into the back then settled down on the couch.  Overlaid on her vision an interface appeared, drawn there by the computer in her right eye.  She opened the chip’s security systems and started working out how to reset the self-destruct timer.

As a standard precaution the chips given her were typically loaded with a timer containing enough electrical charge to fry whatever data the chip held, turning its delicately suspended pseudo-crystals to slag in the process.  To avoid tampering, the timer was linked to a hardwired security interface with a robust morphing algorithm.

Leah pulled the algorithm up on her display and watched it writhe and twist as pseudo-random numbers distorted the code structure.  Entry with conventional means like a keyboard and mouse was impossible as any attempt to gain a gateway would result in the connection being sheared off as the structure changed faster than man or machine could enter the code.

One of the reasons Leah was successful as a runner was she had the cyberware to provide unconventional means of entering security systems of this nature.  She rarely had to abort delivery because of time constraints, which made her popular with her employers.

She hotloaded preset cracking algorithms of her own and flexed her fingers, readying herself for the actual task of cracking the security.  Both hands were loaded with sensors linked to a morphing decrypt algorithm.  By moving her hands she could twist her own algorithm to copy the morphing security system.  She had to match her algorithm to the security as it morphed and hold it long enough for the crackers to do their work.  Usually it was a time so short she wasn’t aware of any duration, but sometimes her software had to rotate through the crackers a couple times before a hole opened.

Leah took a deep breath and fired up the software.  It appeared as an envelope surrounding the security algorithm, automatically giving itself wide spacing so it wouldn’t accidentally cross the security and trigger the system.  She watched the security morph and searched for a repeating pattern.  They were always there, but sometimes they were hard to see.

Gateways appeared and vanished randomly, visible for only a split second.  They were temptations, daring a hacker to try to match them, truly random and guaranteed to produce quick failure.  If she had the actual decrypt software, it would simply match the morphing security exactly and provide access without any of the fancy footwork she would have to do.

What she was looking for was a repeating gateway, a backdoor the programmer left just in case the key was lost.  Several times she thought she found one, only to find after a couple iterations the gateway would be replaced by a spike designed to breach the decrypt attempt and trigger the defense mechanism.

Close proximity of the hacking envelope to the security algorithm produced more accurate readings but at the same time increased the danger of being breached.  After watching the twisting security package for a minute, Leah came to the belated conclusion that the default distance wasn’t going to work.  This was some pretty heavy duty security software.

She stopped watching for gateways and examined the morph pattern.  It had a repeating phase with minor pseudo-random alterations, not too complicated in itself, but it had deep pockets that defeated the distant hacking envelope.  Carefully, Leah worked her fingers, matching the hacking envelope to the security algorithm at a distance, then slowly working it further in as she worked out the motions.

Beads of sweat rolled down her forehead and she blinked them away furiously.  She concentrated on the morphing security package and, while continuing the finger motions keeping the envelope free of the package, again resumed her search for the repeating gateway.

There it was, deep inside an oscillating recess, hidden by distance from her earlier searches.  She timed the oscillations and brought her hacking envelope closer until it was in tandem a hair apart above the gateway.  The rest of the envelope she pulled back, not needing it to be in such close proximity.

The hacking envelope touched, just barely, the oscillating gateway and Leah held it in contact, both hands gracefully matching the waving of the security package then initiated the crackers.  A bridge of white light joined the gateway to the envelope and in a blur in her peripheral vision, a long list of cracking algorithms scrolled by.  A second ticked by, then a match was found and the gateway locked into place.  The security package melted away, leaving a clean, stable information package.

Leah heaved a sigh of relief and opened the package, searching for the timer object.  To her surprise, the data inside the package was open, unencrypted and available to her scrutiny.  She pulled back before anything registered and stared at the wall across the room, thinking.

Knowing what she carried was dangerous.  On many occasions, she had heard of the gruesome deaths runners suffered when they were so incautious as to delve into the secrets the major corporations stole from each other.  Usually, the data package itself was locked inside another security package to prevent casual reading.  To have it open was worrying and dangerous.

Regardless, she had to reset the destruct timer before the security algorithm engaged again, so she went back and gave herself another twenty-four hours to deliver the chip to the receiver.  The temptation of the data hung like a Pandora’s Box, taunting her.  She pulled back and looked at the package as an abstract object, fighting the temptation and wondering what it was she was risking her life for.

Leah’s job was getting the technology from one corporation to another.  Often it was in the form of datachips, blueprints and chemical formulas.  Rarely, she ended up smuggling an actual piece of technology and she always demanded premium rates up front and double upon delivery.

Here she was, staring at some obscure piece of technology that some corporation was willing to shell out millions of credits for.  Her services didn’t come cheap but that was just a drop in the ocean compared to the price the defector commanded.  In all likelihood, if she did look at it, she wouldn’t understand it in the least.  She didn’t have an inkling of the complex technologies behind nanotech, ion drives and suchlike.

What could it hurt?  What was the worst thing that could happen?  She takes a quick peek at some unbelievably convoluted chemical formula and forgets it five seconds later, what little she did understand.

She almost reached out then pulled back, admonishing herself.  She was never told explicitly not to look.  It was just heavily implied and the security systems employed always delivered a message more impinging than mere words.  Whatever data she was transporting was to remain secret.

But she was able to demand such a high price because it was known she could hack almost any security package and thus practically guarantee delivery.  Someone wouldn’t hand her a datachip and not expect her to look inside.

Maybe the data was a message for her.

She decided to look at the same time the security package re-engaged and she stared at the morphing algorithm, heart hammering.  Her computers knew the algorithm now and she could open it automatically, but seeing the security back in place jolted her back to reality.  She was insane for even thinking about looking.

She closed down the connection to the datapad and set it on the coffee table.  Her hands were shaking and she shook them out, trying to restore control.  Despite both hands being mechanical, nerves still transmitted all the human tendencies, such as shaking hands.  She had heard that if you got a complete nerve re-wire that such things stopped, but that was going too far even for her.

Her comm unit beeped, startling her.  She accepted the incoming call and raised an eyebrow at Rodney, trying to cover her break of composure.  “What do you want this time?”

“Always the pleasant greetings, Leah.”

“I’m not paying you to shoot the shit, Rodney.”

“I wouldn’t charge you for that, you know me.”

“I know my bill last month.  I’m not paying you for this call if you don’t cut to the chase.”

“Fine.  You opened the package?”

“I reset the timer since I have to skip town and needed the extra time.  Standard procedure.”

“Hardly standard.”

A pregnant silence followed.  “Well?” Leah finally demanded.

Rodney suddenly looked nervous.

“What is it?  If you’re holding out on me, remember first that I know where you live.”

Rodney waved his hand, brushing off her implied threat, which communicated more to Leah than the simple gesture.  Leah wasn’t bluffing.  If Rodney sold her out, she would hunt him down and kill him, and he knew it, too.  And that meant that someone must have a gun to his head right now and was more of an immediate threat to his future well-being than she was.

“I’m leaving.  Don’t trace this call.”  Leah cut the connection and picked her datapad up off the table.  She started taking the datachip out then stopped.  Rodney expected her to read whatever it was.  More importantly, someone else expected her to read it.  Someone with enough guns to get to Rodney.

She held the datapad, trying to think.  There was too much unknown.  She had no idea what was in the datachip.  And who put Rodney’s nuts in a vice?  Who was paying her?  Who did the datachip belong to?  These things never bothered her before, but now they suddenly had sinister threat hiding just beyond her understanding.

Without thinking about what she was doing, she copied the contents of the datapad’s memory to her internal computers.  It was an exact facsimile, security system and everything, of what was on the datachip.  It wasn’t a copy, since the chip would destruct if someone copied it, but for it to be opened, whatever device was reading it had to obtain the data somehow.  Usually, that data was secure and transient, but being a hacker, Leah had long since overridden the datapad’s automatic memory purge systems.

She had the data now, whatever it was, and could look at it at will.  But right now, she had to get out of where she was.  She replayed her conversation with Rodney, mentally counting the seconds it had taken.  If someone was really on the ball, they could have tracked her down in that time, but it was pushing the boundaries of reality.  She could almost convince herself that she was safe, but a gut feeling urged her to move, and now.

Never one to ignore the gut feelings, Leah pocketed the datapad, gave one last wistful look toward the shower and left the apartment.  She reactivated the security, included the morphing algorithm from the datachip just for fun and headed to the elevators.  To all intents and purposes, that apartment was hers now.  She’d have to call cleaners in to handle the mess and add the utility bill to her account, but it was nice to have another place to hide in should the need arise.

The elevator dinged open and she smiled at the two thugs crammed into the elevator and stepped in.  “Garage, please,” she requested to the thug next to the button panel.

He pushed the button, a confused look on his face.  Leah watched him exchange looks with his companion, both trying to figure out what to do.  The elevator was too small for all three of them and they were smashed together trying to be courteous and not touch her.

They were after her, it was clear.  Both had a hand in their jackets, just as clearly holding guns and trying not to show it.  They didn’t have room in the elevator to turn around, let alone pull a gun.

“Nice day, isn’t it?” Leah asked as the elevator dropped toward the garage.

“Uh…”

“You boys live here?”

“Uh, no.”

“Shame.  I like this place.”

“Uh, lady…”

“Hmm?”

“Are you… I mean…”

“Am I Leah Holloway?”

“Uh…”

“Yes.  I am.”  The elevator dinged open at the garage and Leah stepped out.  “You boys be good, now.”

The door was half closed by the time one of the thugs came out of his stupor and stopped it with an out-thrust arm.  “Hey!”

Leah pulled her pistol from where it was tucked behind her waistband and pointed it at the thug’s head.  The pistol hummed as its internal computer synced with her optical hardware.  It was a massive piece of hardware, though built fairly light, and was pretty intimidating.  “Don’t do something stupid,” she said, flirting lilt gone.  “Drop the guns.  Now.”  The thugs complied, angry looks on their faces.  “Good.  Now press the top floor.”  The thug next to the panel did and the door started shutting again.  “Have a nice day, boys.”

The door shut and the elevator started upwards.  Leah shook her head and put the gun back behind her waistband.  Idiots.  Now she needed a vehicle.  Something fast and maneuverable.  Her own bike was ideal for what she needed, but she didn’t have time to be picky.  Besides, her bike was at home and that was an awful long way away.

The garage was probably crawling with more thugs and she couldn’t count on them being as dumb as the last two.  Behind her, the elevator stopped on the next floor above and she could hear shouting echoing down the elevator shaft.  Whatever she was going to do, she had to do it fast.

The garage was a multi-level job, located underground below the apartment building itself.  Leah was on the top level with the opening to the street up a ramp to her right.  The garage itself spiraled downward with parking spaces on both sides of the two-lane thoroughfare, much like one would find at a mall, but without the cheery cartoons on the pillars to help you remember where you parked.

A quick look around was enough to convince Leah that what she wanted wasn’t on this level.  A couple men were at the garage entrance, trying to hide automatic weapons under long coats.  More thugs.  This was no simple bounty hunter group.  This was a corporation security force.  A veritable army was looking for her.  They were in street clothes so Leah wasn’t able to tell which corporation they worked for, a usual precaution.

Leah turned her back on the entrance and heading downward, checking out the cars as she passed, hoping to find something fast enough for her purposes.  She walked quickly, fast enough to get around the corner before the elevators opened, but not fast enough to alarm the men guarding the exit.  Getting out was going to be interesting.

She turned the corner and jogged down the next ramp.  Nothing she saw impressed her in the least.  Mentally she chastised herself.  Naturally an apartment building in a non-corporation slum wouldn’t have anything decent.  If these people had the money for a really nice car, they wouldn’t be living here.

The elevator opened and shouting broke out as men burst out of the cramped elevator and demanded to know where she had gone.  Leah broke into a run, discarding car after car, praying for something, anything, fast enough to outrun the men chasing her.

Pounding footsteps echoed down the garage as the thugs above gave chase.  So much for secrecy.  She ran ahead, a level below.  She needed more time.  She rounded another corner and pulled the pistol out again.  Getting into a firefight down here was stupid.  They had enough men to swamp her and automatic weapons that were more than a match for her pistol.  She just needed to slow them down.

Leah put her back against the pillar and tried to catch her breath.  The footsteps pounded closer and the thugs rounded the corner to a long ramp with no parking spaces and no cover.  She stuck the gun around the corner and fired off a few shots into the ground.

The security thugs hit the dirt cursing and scrambled to cover behind pillars.  Leah fired a few more shots into the pillars they were hiding behind, sending impressive sprays of concrete dust showering down then took off down the ramp again.  The thugs would think a long time before they chased her down that ramp in open view.  Hopefully, they would think long enough for Leah to find a car to her liking, break through the security systems and steal it.

The cars got worse and worse the further she ran down and Leah had the belated realization that the people with money probably bought parking spaces close to the elevators to save themselves the walk up.

Not having any other idea, she kept going.  There wasn’t a car here that had a prayer of out-running the vehicles the men chasing her were bound to have.  She passed a rusted out car from the internal combustion days and a wave of despair washed over her.  Half these cars probably didn’t even start up, the other half had first or second generation solid-state drives, nothing faster than forty miles an hour.

She rounded the last corner and stumbled to a halt.  The dim lighting from higher levels was replaced with bright carbon-arc floods.  She squinted against the sudden brightness and smiled.  On the far wall, a polished bank of elevators stood, flanked by a double row of really nice vehicles of all sorts.  Of course.  The wealthy people who lived here bought the secure spaces at the bottom of the structure and had private elevators to their penthouse suites.  In every slum there are a few who live off the misfortune of others.  Drug dealers, pimps, and frauds, all of whom had to have nice cars but couldn’t live with corporate security sniffing at their doors.

Suddenly, Leah didn’t feel so bad about stealing a car.  These people could afford it.  She walked forward, eyeing the sports cars, peering through windows checking out how high the speedometers went.  Some of these babies could really roll.  She passed a massive, blacked out SUV and stopped dead.

Leah was staring at a beautiful, state of the art motorcycle, sleek and powerful-looking.  The thing must have been driven off the showroom floor last night.  Even her own bike was put to shame beside it.  She approached it and ran a hand down the stubby fairing, smiling to herself.  She laid a hand on the ignition pad and fired up her hacking software.

The security on the bike was lazy, something an amateur would think was good, a simple cube with a single gateway blinking around it.  Leah smiled again.  She’d cracked so many of these things that her software did it automatically, recognizing the gateway pattern from an earlier security system she had cracked.

The bike hummed to life, the only noise coming from the idling transmission.  If she didn’t have a hand on the bike, she probably wouldn’t even know it was on.  She threw a leg over the seat and drew a pair of sunglasses out of another compartment in her leg.  After settling the glasses firmly on her nose, she gunned the engine, threw the clutch and squealed out of the parking space, leaving a long patch of smoking rubber behind her.

She raced up the ramp, leaning the bike over and letting it drift around corners, getting a feel for the way the bike handled.  This is where she really came into her own.  Footraces, gunfights, security systems, all these she knew how to do and was even good at, but fast vehicles was the one love she had.  If she could get out onto the street, these two-bit thugs were as good as left in the dust.

Her tires screamed as they fought for traction against the asphalt as she turned another corner almost laid down all the way.  The two thugs chasing her whipped by, stunned looks of stupefaction painted on their faces, too surprised to do anything but watch her shoot past.

She had the feel of the bike now and leaned down behind the fairing as she burned up the last ramp.  The thugs guarding the entrance cried out in alarm and one of them managed to get his rifle up and fire a burst that stitched a row of stars across the fairing before she was past them.

She heeled the bike over and mentally crossed herself as she skidded out into traffic, rifle fire chattering behind her, bullets kicking up sprays of asphalt and blowing out car windows all around.  She drifted across two lanes of traffic before her tires caught, then she shot away, chaos behind and a clear aisle ahead.

Immediately she opened her comm link and called Rodney.  It rang twice before Rodney picked up.

“You’re not supposed to have this number,” he said, irritated.

“Rodney, I’m riding a stolen bike at eighty miles an hour down a crowded surface street.  There are men chasing me with automatic weapons who don’t care about civilians or being seen.  Care to tell me what’s going on?  I thought this had nothing to do with Simtec.”

“Read the datachip, Beautiful.”  He favored her with one last glare before signing off.

Leah cursed and screamed around a corner, traffic whipping by her on both sides going far slower than she was.  She had a lead on her pursuers for the moment, but if she had a corporation chasing after her, they probably had a satellite lock on her by now.  Whatever tracking bugs they had planted on her were useless in a vehicle chase, but that wouldn’t stop someone with the resources to place an entire city into a gridlock.  She had to get out of the city and now.

She turned another corner, trying to put more distance between herself and any immediate pursuers.  Mentally she traced out the fastest route out of the city.  Her intended destination had been in New Bakersfield, a hundred miles east of where she was now, in what used to be San Luis Obispo.  The small college town had turned metropolitan when the two nearby college campuses were appropriated for high tech research by Simtec, one of the micro-computer corporations.

New Bakersfield was a nowhere town, just a drop point some place neutral where her contact could receive the package and remain anonymous.  There were plenty of long straight highways between New Bakersfield and here, highways where the bike’s ridiculous speed was going to come in handy.

She heeled the bike over again and shot down the next street.  The open highway was a rapidly dwindling mile away, through the last of the hastily-erected high-rises studding the perimeter of the city.  In a car, she would be having a lot of trouble right now.  Rush hour traffic clogged the streets as desperate 9 to 5 workers raced home to get their fix of radiation poisoning staring at unconvincing actors forcing sitcom humor to accompanying laugh tracks.  Technology and years hadn’t made television any better, to the contrary, the lack of originality that infected early twenty-first century TV only got worse with the same tired cliches simply shoehorned into modern settings.

Simtec couldn’t be the ones chasing her.  If it was Simtec, the entire city would have been gridlocked hours ago.  Embedded STDs at every cross street would have gutted her tires blocks back.  No, it was an outside corporation, one ballsy enough to trespass in Simtec’s territory en masse.

But who?  Corporations generally didn’t take kindly their secrets being stolen and it wasn’t unusual for them to be out to get her.  It wasn’t usually personal, though, since Leah was freelance and worked for whoever gave her the bigger paycheck.  Usually they were civilized about it and recognized that it was just business.  Often she strongly suspected that she ran the same piece of stolen technology back and forth so many times that no one remembered who had invented it originally.  She didn’t care; it was all the same to her so long as they paid the fee.

Besides, the corporations that hired her usually saw her as a valuable commodity and having actual bullets fired at her was rare.  Usually it was stun projectiles or suchlike.  Guns were usually used by mercenaries hired to track her down, not the corporations themselves.  Multiple corporate thugs with automatic weapons shooting to kill showed an unsettling turn of events.

There was really only one way to find out.  Rodney was useless, all her other contacts were likely lying low.  She had one lead to go on, the data package from the datachip.  She cleared the last of the congested traffic and gunned up the empty intercity highway.  She could be in New Bakersfield in forty-five minutes assuming nothing interrupted her en route.

With an open lane ahead, straight as far as she could see, Leah took some of her attention off driving and after twisting the throttle up to 160, she settled down and opened the data packet.  It began with a letter, addressed to her.

Dear Ms. Holloway,

You are probably in a hurry, so I’ll keep this brief.  I hope you get this letter before you leave Simtec City.  The information in the datachip you are carrying was developed by BioCorp, a manufacturer of cyberware.  You were contracted by NexTec, a software/firmware conglomerate, to deliver the package to their agent in New Bakersfield.  You are to be terminated upon delivery.

NexTec has plans for the stolen technology, the exact nature of which I don’t know, but I can make a very good guess.  Being somewhat privy to BioCorp’s technological development, I know the line they were traveling in.

Perhaps you have heard of cyber-zombies, where the victim gets so much cyberware implanted that it overwhelms him and he starts acting on automatic, spurred on by his cyberware.  Killing sprees, mass murders, and suicides have been attributed to a victim going zombie.

I have reason to believe that someone going zombie isn’t accidental or even overwhelm.  NexTec’s firmware department has been trying to figure out for years how to control people via gateway viruses and introducing feedback up the nervous system.  Abortive attempts could very well be the “zombies” they lost control of.

If NexTec gets BioCorp’s firmware structure analysis, they could automate a gateway virus that would be capable of turning into slavish automatons anyone with over 15% cyberware.  Since a third of the population has cyberware percents exceeding that, NexTec would suddenly and dramatically rise to world-wide power.

I have no interest in living in a slave society, and neither do you, I believe.  There is a natural balance of things that must be maintained.

I was able to introduce this letter to the datachip but was otherwise unable to prevent its delivery to you.  You must not make your planned delivery.  Deliver the package instead to 3145 Orchard Lane in Simtec City.  A man in a black baseball hat will be your drop contact.  We will make sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.  Your delivery fee plus a danger bonus will be paid upon receipt.

There was no signature, just yesterday’s date and an encrypted package attached to the end.  BioCorp’s firmware structure analysis, if the letter was true.  Leah slowed down until she was travelling the speed limit and tried to figure out what to do.

Obviously, if the letter was true, delivery into NexTec hands would be catastrophic.  But who was NexTec?  It would be easy to believe that her unknown informant was really some benevolent chap out to save the world, but her experience with corporate politics screamed otherwise.  Like as not, the man waiting on Orchard Lane was a NexTec agent.

Who was trying to kill her then?  BioCorp wouldn’t want their firmware analysis getting out for obvious reasons.  Just the thought of that gave her the willies.  NexTec probably wouldn’t think twice before trying to gun her down.  Simtec likely had some hand in it.  Not much went by in Simtec City that wasn’t known about at some level of Simtec’s security forces.  Living in the micro computer capital of the world made things like surveillance an expected part of life.

So Simtec was allowing her to leave?  Simtec stood just as much to lose if NexTec came to power.  Literally every one of their employees has a cyber percent exceeding 25%.  Simtec would just be annexed outright, so Simtec didn’t know about this.  BioCorp was in similar straits.  BioCorp could be running the thug army back in Simtec City – they’d have a strong interest in getting that datachip back RTFN, at whatever the cost.

Of course, the datachip could hold nothing of the sort and it was just an elaborate ploy to get her to change destinations.  Hacking into a datachip when it wasn’t in a receiver was possible but the amount of hardware required would fill a small bus.  And Baseball Cap could be waiting for her with smartgun turrets and landmines instead of a paycheck.  Nothing was certain, nothing could be counted on.

Delivery to New Bakersfield was out of the question.  Until she verified that what she held was benign, there was no way she could in good conscience deliver the chip as planned.  She was under contract to deliver a datachip given her by a specified anonymous individual to a specified, again anonymous, individual.  Nothing in her contract said anything about content of said datachip, or even when the chip would be delivered.  Unless she died in the next twenty-four hours, she would deliver the chip to the waiting contact in New Bakersfield.  Whether the chip would have the same contents by then was another story completely.

But what to do now?  None of her intel people like Rodney would be reliable.  Fatty might tell her the truth, but Fatty never knew anything until it was way too late.  She racked her brain trying to think of someone.  Finally, she came to the conclusion that there was only one person who she knew wouldn’t be in on the scam.  She threw the bike into a smoking U-turn and screamed back toward Simtec City.

So much for a simple job.

Leah sat in a dark corner of a nightclub and watched the pounding music knock carbonation bubbles to the surface of her untouched beer.  Getting back into the city had been easy.  Losing the trailing thugs had been a little more involved, but had turned out to be just as easy.  They would pick her up again eventually, but until then she had some breathing room.

She was waiting for a man to show up.  He was balding, a little flustered, with red cheeks, oversized glasses and jumpy eyes.  The last time she had seen him, he was handing her the datachip now residing in her leg compartment.  Using a sketch of the man’s face, she had hacked into Simtec City’s surveillance network and identified him as Leon Edwards, a green grocer in the market district.  He was a middle-man, a stage point to keep the actual defector secret.

She had picked through Leon’s files and found he visited the nightclub Fire Fox every Tuesday at 10:30 like clockwork.  He would pound down a couple shots, try to pick up a few girls, then go home dejected.  He was listed as a potential molester so was black tabbed throughout the security network.  A camera followed him wherever he went.

Leah picked up her beer and carefully placed it next to the other condensation rings on the table, trying to form a moiré effect.  She sat back and admired her handiwork, then pulled up the feed from the security camera following Edwards.  He was in his car still, jerking off in the parking lot before coming in.  She sighed and checked her watch.  10:25.  He still had five minutes to do his nut before he was late.

She considered going out to his car, but she needed him to cooperate, not get scared and run.  He got a decent paycheck for his middle-man work, in addition to whatever loading produce into bags got him, but for all his wealth he had really bad luck with the ladies.  Today was going to be his lucky day.

Leah checked the camera again and found he had finally finished and was cleaning up.  She shut down the video feed and wrapped her shoulder-length brown hair up into a stylishly sloppy bun and spent a minute applying some light makeup.  She was still wearing her rash suit, but dropping the front zipper on her jacket down a couple more inches and instructing the fabric to take up the slack around her hips and chest gave her the biker-chick look that freaks like Edwards dreamed about.  She checked her mirror and smiled to herself.  Without being conceited about it, she was quite striking.

A couple guys at the bar were watching her make her preparations and nudging each other.  Eventually one of them got up and swaggered over to her table.  He leaned over drunkenly and gave her a loose smile.

“Hey, baby, you wanna-”

Halfway through his last word, Leah kicked out and knocked his feet out from under him.  The floor was slick with spilled drink and other unspeakables and provided uncertain footing in the best of times.  The man’s feet shot out from under him and he cracked his chin on the edge of the table then collapsed to the floor.

Leah sat and calmly watching the man’s friends try to decide what to do.  Very clearly she wasn’t looking to get picked up.  Finally one of them came over, apologized and dragged his semi-conscious friend away.

Her attention was diverted as Leon walked into the club and stood uncertainly in the doorway, looking around.  She saw his eye catch on her and she gave him a wink then picked up her beer and pretended to drink.  The trap was set.

It didn’t take him long, if time was measured in high-proof shots, to work up the courage to make his way over to her table.  Over his shoulder, Leah watched the group of men with their now-revived companion stare in trepidation.  The balding man was about to get his ass handed to him.  Their surprise was almost comical when, after exchanging a few words, the man sat down at her table and ordered another round.

Leah leaned back in her chair, making the most of her body, playing Edwards like a fish, with hope the line in her reel.  The men watching shook their heads in disgust, wondering what she was doing with an old fogy like Edwards when she could have the choice of pretty much any man in the bar.

Way too soon he started hinting at going to his place for a little action.  She played dumb with him, making him get all sweaty and worked up, dragging it out.  The man was desperate and just sitting at a table with her, making poorly veiled references to sex, was making him stutter and his imagination go wild.

Finally, unable to put the guy through any more pain, she accepted one of his more direct requests to get in her pants and left the club with him, the disbelieving eyes of the rejected men making her smile.  They wouldn’t want what was coming to Edwards.

They made it to his car before he made a grab at her.  He was drunk and she saw it coming from a mile away and neatly sidestepped, carrying on the conversation as if nothing happened.  The thought of the man touching her turned her stomach.

Suddenly Edwards dropped all social training and caution.  The scent of his prey filled his nostrils and common sense and decency were tossed aside.  He seized Leah’s wrist and immediately found himself face first on the rough parking lot, searing pain in his shoulder and what felt suspiciously like the barrel of a gun pressed firmly against the base of his skull.  He started to struggle, then froze when the dry click of a hammer being pulled back sounded next to his ear.

“Leon Edwards, age fifty-two, weight two twenty-eight, height five-seven, place of residence 1442 Eastwood Street, Simtec City.”

“How…?” he asked stupidly, confused and hurt, his mind still fogged by the proximity of sex.  Having a girl straight from a wet dream kneeling on his back wasn’t helping anything.

“Profession,” Leah continued, reading the dossier from his security file, “green grocer.  Interesting how a grocer has such a nice car.”

“My parents–”

“Cut the crap, Edwards, I don’t have time for it.  Where did you get the datachip?”

“Datachip?  What datachip?”

Leah pressed the barrel of her pistol harder into the back of his skull.  “This is a Krytec semi-automatic pistol; it fires .45 caliber slugs with a muzzle velocity of sixteen hundred feet per second.  It’s currently loaded with Magnum hollowpoint rounds.  If I pulled the trigger right now your brains would splatter halfway across the parking lot.”

“Oh.  That datachip.”

“Good boy.  Now, where did you get it?”

“I can’t reveal my sources…”

“Shut up.  I just need a name.  Or a corporation.  Either one will do.  I don’t give a damn who the mole is, I just need to verify the data.”

“You’re the runner!  The girl I delivered to earlier today!”

“And I know where you live, so don’t plan anything stupid.”

“Why do you need to verify the data?  You’re just a runner!”

“Easy there, big fella.  I’m the one with the gun against your head, remember?  And you’re just a middleman.”  She leaned down to whisper in his ear, “You’re expendable.  I am not.”  She sat back up and said in a normal tone of voice, “If you want to find out just how expendable you are, don’t answer the question one more time.”

“They’ll kill me!”

“If I scream, you’ll spend the rest of your life in Simtec’s jail for attempted rape.  I hear it’s pretty rough for rapists and molesters.  Apparently the other inmates return the favor.  Daily.”

“Please, I don’t…”

“Do you realize that you already have twenty-four hour surveillance?  They suspect you of multiple rapes.  I just need to point a finger and you’re gone.  Not even God could help you.”

“Okay… okay!  I’ll tell you.  Just don’t scream.”

“Who gave you the chip?  What corporation?”

“I don’t know who gave it to me.  I do know the corporation.”

“Fine.  Which one?”

“NexTec.”

“What?”  NexTec!  How could that be?

“NexTec.  Someone in NexTec delivered the chip.”

“Bullshit.  What proof do you have?”

“I said I wouldn’t sell out Simtec so he showed me his ID to prove he didn’t work for Simtec.  He had a NexTec ID.”

“Then you would know his name!”

“He covered it with a finger, I couldn’t see, I swear.”

“What department then?  Tell me everything you know.”

“Firmware.  I saw that much.  Not much else.”

“Describe him.”

“He was wearing sunglasses and had a hat that covered his hair.  He was an older man, but I don’t know what he looks like, I swear!”

Leah got up off the man’s back and put the pistol back behind her waistband.  Edwards started getting up and she shoved him back down with a foot between his shoulder blades.  “You’re staying right here.  Count to a hundred slowly then drive home.  Take a cold shower and go to bed.  Forget this night ever happened.  Understand?”

“Yeah.”

“And don’t try to do anything heroic.  I will kill you if I ever hear your name again.  Are we clear?”

“Perfectly,” he muttered.

“Good.  Start counting.”

Leah turned and walked away.  Edwards wasn’t lying, she was certain of that.  As she walked back to where she had her bike parked, she struggled to piece data together.  Nothing matched.  If NexTec delivered the datachip to Edwards, why would NexTec want the chip back?

She reached her bike and sat on the ground with her back against the rear wheel.  Exhaustion threatened to overwhelm her and she sat with her head bowed, mind numb.  All her options were blanks.  There was no data she could rely on.  Every datum she had was contradicted by another.

There were only two options she had left.  She could deliver the chip to the man waiting for her in a black baseball hat.  She could trust in the letter and the benevolence of the man who sent it.  Or she could continue with her aborted delivery and drop the package off in New Bakersfield.

Either way she wouldn’t be blamed.  She could drop all responsibility and trust blindly in the corporations.  That almost made her laugh out loud.  No, both those options weren’t good enough.

A third option occurred to her, one that she hadn’t thought of earlier.  She could go to the man in the black hat and demand answers.  She had a bargaining chip.  They wouldn’t kill her, not until they had the datachip themselves.

Her mind made up, she opened the compartment in her leg, drew the datachip out and carefully wedged it into a crack in the asphalt next to her bike.  She brushed some dirt over it then climbed to her feet.  Nobody would be able to find that chip except for her.  Even if someone tortured the location out of her, there was no way they could find the right crack in a parking lot as broken as this one.  There was probably a hundred linear miles of cracks, all of which would have to be searched with a fine-toothed comb.  No, the chip was secure for now.

She got on her bike and fired it up, her exhaustion replaced with new purpose.

3145 Orchard Lane was a quiet house on a quiet residential street, shaded with towering poplars and green with meticulously mown lawns.  Leah rolled to a stop at the curb and looked the house over.  It was three in the morning and every light on the street was out except for the occasional porch light.  The exception was 3145, with brightly lit bay windows facing the street.  A man in a black baseball cap could be seen sitting on the couch watching TV.

Leah killed the motorcycle and threw the kickstand into place.  The street was the epitome of middle-class suburbia, to bed at ten, up at six, work at eight, home at six, dinner, TV, back to bed at ten.  Leah’s presence on a state of the art motorcycle in the middle of the night was thoroughly out of place.

She got off the bike and walked up the steps to the front door.  She knocked twice and waited while the man in the black baseball cap got off the couch and walked over to the door.

The door opened and the man smiled at her.  “Hello, Leah.  Glad you could make it.”  He had a nice face with tired eyes and a small smile.  A full day’s growth of beard blurred his jaw line.

“Can I come in?”

“Of course.  Do you want a drink?”

“No thanks.”

“You have the chip with you?”

“We need to talk.”

The man’s smile drained away, leaving him looking stern.  “Where is the chip?”

“The chip is safe.  There are things I don’t understand, things that must be cleared up before I give that chip to anyone.”

“I see.”  He jerked a hand up and before Leah could do anything footsteps pounded into the room behind her and the cold muzzle of a rifle pressed into her back.  A hand pulled her pistol out from her waistband.

“You’re making a mistake,” Leah said calmly, “the chip will self-destruct in hours if I don’t retrieve it and reset the timer.”

“Leah, that datachip is important.  We need it, I need it.”

“You have me at a disadvantage.  I don’t even know your name.”

“You can call me Ettricks.  Now we can be civilized about this or we can be barbaric.  The choice is up to you.”

“I just want to know what is on the chip.”

“Didn’t you read the note?”

“I read the note.  I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Of course.  Did I not explain it sufficiently?”

“What you explained was quite clear.”

“Then what is your question?”

“I happen to know that the chip came from NexTec.”

The revelation shocked Ettricks, though he covered it well.  Just a slight check in his stride, the smallest twitch of his mouth.  “That’s not a question, Leah, that’s a statement.  What is your question?”

“If the chip came from NexTec, who the hell are you?”

Ettricks sighed.  He thought for a moment, then sat on the couch and propped a foot up on the coffee table.  He waved a hand and the gun stuck in Leah’s back was removed.  “Have a seat, Leah.  Ron, go wake up the good doctor and bring him in.”

Leah sat in a lazy boy across from Ettricks, nervously sitting at the edge of the chair.  One of the three men with rifles who had come in behind her, Ron presumably, left and went up the stairs.  Leah fidgeted while Ron knocked on a door upstairs then had a hushed conversation with another man.  Finally he came back down the stairs with a rumpled-looking man with a shock of graying hair in wild disarray dressed in pajamas.

“Ah, good morning, Doctor,” Ettricks said.  “Have a seat.”

“I’ll stand.”

“As you wish.  Please tell Leah here what is on the chip.”

“You the runner?” he asked.  Leah nodded.  “Poor girl.  I never wanted anyone to get caught up in this.”

“The chip, Doctor,” Ettricks prompted.

The doctor sighed and shook his head slowly.  “Leah, why don’t you tell me what you know first.”

Leah looked at Ettricks, who shrugged.  “Okay.  I know what Ettricks told me and what I… discovered.”  As much as she disliked Leon Edwards, letting these sharks know he ratted them out would ensure his death and she wouldn’t do that to him.  “The chip contains the firmware structure analysis used by BioCorp in their cyberware manufacture.  NexTec plans to use the data to construct a feedback virus using implanted cyberware to control people.”

“You seem well-versed in computers,” the doctor observed with a smile.

“I’m a bit of a hacker myself.”

Ettricks laughed.  “She has a bi-monitored manual code regulator.  So you could say she’s a hacker, yes.”

“Very well.  You seem to have the basic concept.  The details would likely go over even your head.  I’m not sure I completely understand them myself.”  The doctor heaved a sigh.  “Leah, the firmware analysis was stolen months ago.  I’ve spent the last two months writing the virus itself.  It’s complete.  The virus is on the chip.”

Leah felt the blood drain from her face and she suddenly felt dizzy.  “Done?  Then… then why do you need it delivered to New Bakersfield?”

Ettricks held up a hand, “I’ll field this one, Doc.  The good Doctor doesn’t work for NexTec.  Well, let’s be more specific.  He used to work for NexTec.  Then he defected and arranged for the virus to be sent to New Bakersfield where a contact from BioCorp is waiting to receive the datachip.”

“I would never trust you with the virus,” the doctor spat.

“Then why did you write it, hmm?” Ettricks mocked.

The doctor wilted and shook his head.  “I never thought anyone would use it.  It was a theoretical experiment only, never intended for use.”

Leah rolled her eyes.  The corporations used anything and everything they thought might give them advantage over each other.  “I don’t get it.  If it’s just a piece of software, why do you need the chip?  Just make another copy.”

“It’s not that simple,” the doctor said with a smile.  He was truly proud of his code, even if it was now being used to enslave the world.  “It has an aggressive seek and destroy function that will only allow one copy of the code to be in existence.  The first time it is put onto the ‘net, it takes an impression from the user and assigns control of all corrupted systems to that user.  Obviously there can only be one user to avoid conflicts, so every subsequent introduction of the virus to the ‘net gets ‘attacked’ and subjugated by the existing virus.”

“So why can’t you just create another copy then?”

“Leah, you’re a hacker,” Ettricks jumped in, irritated.  “Everything is connected to the ‘net.  Every datachip, terminal, computer, datapad, every person who has a comm link is connected to the ‘net, everything.  If two copies are made, they attack each other and only one is left functional.  Since the copy on the datachip was made first, it has ultimate control.  One we made now would just be subjugated by the original.”

“But it’s encrypted.  I saw it myself.”

“You saw it?” the Doctor said, fear and awe combining on his face and in his voice.  “Then you’re infected.  We’re all infected now.  Everyone you saw, everyone you spoke to, and everyone they spoke to is infected.  The encryption envelope is the carrier.  If that virus gets stamped then we’re all as good as slaves.  How long ago did you look at the package?”

“Yesterday at around five in the afternoon.”

“And you didn’t try to open it?”

“Of course not.”

The doctor collapsed into a chair.  “The entire world could be infected by now.  Whoever stamps that virus will have ultimate control over the entire population of this planet.  God help us all.”

“The chip will self-destruct in fifteen hours,” Leah pointed out, “does that make a difference?”

“If the chip were to self-destruct, the virus would never get stamped.  Any future attempts to use the feedback loophole would be subjugated by the unstamped virus.  The virus would be there, but nobody would be able to use it.  A complete control interface permanently locked.”

“So, Leah,” Ettricks said with a grim smile, “now you understand why that datachip must be found.  Ron, take the good Doctor back upstairs.  He needs his rest.”  Ron roughly grabbed the doctor’s arm and hauled him to his feet then led him up the stairs.

“The hell I’m going to tell you,” Leah spat, “I’d rather die.”

“That can be arranged, but fifteen hours is an awfully long time, Leah.  You might want to reconsider.  A lot of pain can be delivered through cybernetic implants.”

“You’re going to torture me?”

“Torture is such an uncivilized word.”

“Call it what you will.  I still won’t tell you the location.”

“Such resolve in such a young woman.  I wonder, are you actually as brave as you sound?”

“If you torture me, I won’t be lucid enough to find the chip even if I wanted to.  It won’t work.  I hid it too well.”

“So you say.”

Their conversation was cut abruptly short by wailing sirens that erupted all around the house.  Bright strobes flashing between red and blue shone in through the windows and illuminated the police cordon that had crept into place around the house.

“You’re surrounded,” a bullhorn roared, “drop your weapons and come out of the house with your hands in the air.”

One of the guards drew back the slide on his rifle and swung it up towards the window.  Before he could get it leveled a single shot cracked out of the darkness and the guard dropped in a shower of imploding glass from the window.  Gunfire erupted from upstairs, followed by a fusillade from outside then silence.

“Looks like they crashed your party, Ettricks.”

Ettricks snarled something unintelligible at her and leapt for the fallen guard’s rifle.  He barely had it in hand before another barrage of fire came from outside, blasting in the rest of the bay window and cutting down Ettricks and the remaining guard.

Leah stood, stunned, one hand in front of her eyes shielding them from the bright strobes and flying glass, wind from a hovering helicopter blowing her hair around her face.  Slowly she raised her other hand and walked out of the house, carefully stepping around the riddled bodies on the floor.

She was met at the door by a pair of officers in riot gear, dressed in the uniform of Simtec City Security.  They hustled her off the porch and behind the bulk of a car.  She was sat down and a man with lieutenant bars squatted down beside her.

“Ma’am, how many people in the house?”

“I don’t know, uh, Ettricks, three guards and an old doctor.  I didn’t see anyone else.”

“Where’s the doctor?”

“He went up to the second floor.”

The lieutenant stood up and checked in via radio to his men then hunkered down next to her again.  “He’s dead.  Got caught in the cross fire.  Sorry.”

His radio crackled, someone reporting that the house of secure.

“Okay, Ma’am, you’re coming with us.”  He lifted her to her feet and ran her to a waiting helicopter.  “Take her in.  The Captain wants to speak with her personally.”

…

Leah sat in a stark room, picking the last donut crumbs off the plate in front of her.  A cup of coffee sat untouched next to the plate.  She had tried to explain that she didn’t drink coffee but an officer insisted on bringing it anyway.  Captain Farghan sat across from her, watching her eat.  When it became obvious that she was done, he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table.

“Ms. Holloway.  I want to hear your side of the story.”

“I’m a runner.  I don’t have a story.”

“Of course.  Professional courtesy.”  Leah didn’t say anything.  “I have a rather interesting transcript here of your conversation in the house on Orchard Lane.  Do you want to make any comment on that?”

“No.”

“Leah – can I call you that?  We can put you away for conspiracy on a rather grand scale.  World domination?”

“That’ll never stick in a court.  I was used, it’s obvious in the transcript.”

He waved a hand dismissively.  “Transcripts can be changed.  We are in Simtec City, so it doesn’t really matter what you say.”

“What do you want, Captain?”  Leah checked her clock.  Thirteen hours left.  If she could stall for that long the threat would be past.

“I want that datachip.  I want to make sure it’s destroyed before someone accidentally finds it.”

“You’ll have to come up with something better than that.  The chip is gone in thirteen hours.  You could just place the block around the nightclub under lockdown and it’d be over.”

“So it’s by a nightclub?”

Leah kicked herself mentally and stared at the Captain, mute.

“Not saying anything?”  Leah just stared at him.  “Okay.  You don’t have to.”  He picked up his radio and said, “Sergeant, run a trace on Ms. Holloway.  Give me every step she’s taken in the last twenty-four hours.  Give me the name of any nightclub she was near in that time.”  He gave her a smug smile.  “See, lady, it doesn’t matter whether you talk or not.  Simtec knows everything that goes on in this town.”

“Have fun finding it,” Leah shrugged.  “I doubt I could find it myself.”

“Oh, we will.  Have no worries about that.  In the meantime, you’re coming with me to the debriefing room.  We can watch there as they follow your footsteps.  I’ll want you handy in case I need you.”

He stood up and Leah stood up with him.  She didn’t have anything else to do except stand by and hope to foil any plan Captain Farghan came up with.

The debriefing room was built to accommodate Simtec City’s absurd fixation on surveillance.  Three of the four walls were covered with screens showing live feeds, any of which could be programmed to pull feeds from the various cameras picking up a target.

Leah found herself watching the motorcycle theft earlier in the day from several different perspectives.  She knew there were cameras everywhere, but multiple cameras placed to see her every action when she was behind cover?  There was no way these creeps would miss where she hid the datachip.

She scooted her chair closer to the table so she could hide her hands well under the edge and started hacking.  Breaking into the database was simple, almost automatic.  The codes rotated through a preset cycle and when she was mid cracking the present code, it switched to one she had cracked earlier and her computer opened it immediately.

Once she was in, she was immediately lost in the millions of video feeds being streamed into the database.  She didn’t have the tracking software that the debriefing room had to track an object through multiple feeds and they were filed under serial numbers rather than anything she could think with.

She tried various filters without any success until she found one that sorted by location.  It didn’t take her long to find the block that the Fire Fox was on.  The number of cameras in and around the club was daunting.  Pages and pages of serial numbers scrolled by and Leah felt her spirits drop.  There was no way she could find the ones she needed in all these.

Well, she had to try.  She opened the first feed and found it pointed at a booth inside the club.  Time ticked by slowly as she opened up feed after feed, none of them showing anything even near the parking lot.

Farghan had his men speeding through the tapes fast-forward, looking for any sign of her making a drop.  Leah watched herself in fast forward as she talked up Edwards.   Farghan, coming to the conclusion that this was the club she had mentioned, dispatched a dozen men to the Fire Fox to stand by and await instructions on where to search.  They’d have her on screen in the parking lot in minutes.

Suddenly Leah had an idea.  Almost sick with haste she abandoned her current search and opened a file she knew well.  It only took her a few seconds to find the cameras assigned to tracking Edwards.  When he came out of the club with her, it set off an alarm somewhere in the system and a pair of flying security camera drones was assigned to watch him, along with the external cameras around the club.

Systematically, Leah deleted the section where she had Edwards pinned to the ground in every camera assigned to his file, which was every camera that could see them, as well as the drones.  It didn’t hide the actual drop, but it was enough of a red herring that she hoped Farghan would take the bait.  If she was right, it might give her enough time to do a little surgical blurring of the actual drop.

It wasn’t long after she finished the last feed that the screens followed them out of the club.  Abruptly the entire room went black as all the camera feeds ran into the deleted segment at the same time.

“What the hell!” Farghan shouted, “Get those cameras back online!  What happened here?”

After a minute of furious search, an officer responded in a scared tone, “Sir, all the feeds are deleted from the database.  This section is gone for two minutes.”

Captain Farghan whirled on Leah.  “You!  Get your hands on top of the table!”  Leah complied, a little sullen.  She hadn’t had a chance to find the cameras on the actual drop yet, but messing with the cameras definitely had the desired effect.  “Did you do this?”

“Captain, I would never interfere with an official investigation,” she said innocently.

“That’s where the drop is!  Sergeant!  Assign all units on site to search the area around Edwards’ car.  We’re looking for a datachip, so it could be anywhere.  Look under every stone, in every crack.  Jones!  Send two units to Edwards’ house.  Search that car from top to bottom.  Scan it, rip it apart, I don’t care, but find me that chip!”

Behind Farghan, the cameras rolled on.  He was too busy arranging the search to pay attention to the cameras as they fast-forwarded through Leah’s moment of angst against the side of her motorcycle and the drop itself.  Then she was on her bike and gone.  The moment of danger was past.  It only took a slight hand movement at the crucial moments to record the serial numbers of the cameras positioned to see her next to her bike.  If she could just get her hands back under the table, she could fuzz the drop.

Leah glanced at the time.  Ten hours left.  Time to distract the good captain some more.  “Captain?”

“What?  I’m busy!”

“Oh, okay, just wanted to ask you a question.  I can wait, though.”

“Good.  No, wait.  What do you want?”

“I was just wondering how you knew to come to Orchard Lane.”

“A neighbor called in a disturbance,” Farghan said distractedly, “Claimed there was a prostitute making a call.  Prostitution is illegal in that neighborhood, so an officer picked up the sound feed to see what was happening.”

“Do you usually get prostitutes dressed in rash suits and riding crotch rockets around here?”

“No- wait!  Jones!  Do we have any units left on Orchard Lane?”

“Sir, there’re two units answering the neighbor’s questions and sending them back to bed.”

“Pull them off that crap!  Search her bike, search the street, the grass, the planters, the gutter, everywhere around where this girl walked.”

Leah shrugged mentally.  She hadn’t meant to send him off on a wild goose chase that time, but whatever worked.  Maybe she could do it again, though.

“What makes you think the chip is there?”

“Huh?”

Leah laughed at the frustrated look on the captain’s face.  “I read that chip hours before I came to Orchard Lane.  It could be anywhere.”

Farghan growled something and walked around the table.  He seized Leah by the lapels and hauled her to her feet, then picked her up until she was hanging by her jacket six inches off the ground.

Leah swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry.  She hadn’t intended to piss the captain off, just broaden his search.

“Tell me where the chip is!”  Farghan’s face was inches away from Leah’s and she got a heavy draft of his cigarette-breath before she could hold her breath.

She coughed, struggled, found he was far too strong.  He must have military-grade cybernetic arms to be able to hold her unwaveringly off the ground so easily.  Well, he wasn’t totally cybernetic.  With a grunt, she drove her left knee into his groin as hard as she could.  Her cybernetic leg, powered by synthetic muscles, was far stronger than her other and was solid and heavy.

Farghan’s face slowly went white and his grip on her coat slackened, dropping her to the floor unceremoniously.  He made a gargling sound and doubled up before collapsing.  As Leah watched, fascinated, his face went from white to red to purple.  Veins she didn’t know existed stood out on his forehead as he struggled to bring his body back under control.

She almost felt bad.  She must have crushed something sensitive for him to be in so much pain.  Then she remembered what the Captain was trying to do and felt better immediately.

Her slight sense of victory faded as the door burst open and another man strode into the room, flanked by a pair of officers wearing braid in loops all over their uniforms.  The other officers, staring horrified at their fallen captain, snapped to attention.

“What is going on in here?” the man asked as he took in the scene.

“Sir, the prisoner just kneed Captain Farghan, sir.”

“Yes, I see that,” the newcomer said dryly.  “Farghan, can you stand?”

With obvious effort, Farghan tried to straighten and collapsed back in on himself, dry heaving on the floor.

The newcomer sighed.  “Sergeant, run to the infirmary and get Farghan a pain killer.”  Jones snapped a salute and ran out of the room.  “Now.  Miss…?”

“Holloway, sir.  Leah Holloway.”

“Miss Holloway, what exactly is it you’re doing in the care of the captain, watching yourself on every monitor in the room?  Some sort of weird voyeurism?”

For some reason, the man’s easy attitude and commanding presence loosened Leah’s tongue.  “They’re searching for a datachip I dropped.”  Immediately, she wanted to slap herself for saying anything.

“A chip?  Isn’t this going a bit beyond normal duties?  Helping a cat out of a tree I can understand, but helping a young woman ‘find her chip’ is a poor use of this station’s resources.”

Leah didn’t say anything, just kept her mouth firmly pressed tight.

“Ah, but you’re a prisoner?  Perhaps this chip is something worth finding, hmm?”

Leah stood where she was, watching him mutely as he walked around the room, carefully stepping over the prone Farghan.  “He’s going to be angry when he comes to, you know.”

“He was angry before I kneed him,” Leah explained.

“Ah.  Well, in that case I’m sure he’ll be reasonable after the sergeant comes back with his painkillers.  I believe you were telling me why they were searching for your chip?”

“Actually, I was playing the deaf-mute in regards to the chip.”

“A sensitive subject, I see.  No matter, I’m sure Farghan will be more than willing to tell me once his face returns to a more normal shade of pink.”

“I can wait, sir.”

“I’m sure.”  The man sat down at the desk and, cautiously, Leah sat back down with her hands in her lap.  Farghan lay on the ground, alternating between spates of unconsciousness and making choked screaming noises through his nose.  The man’s aides stood by the door and pretended not to pay attention to anything, but Leah could catch their eyes flicking toward Farghan and looks of shared pain were on their faces.

The moment she was waiting for had arrived.  Quickly she pulled up the list of cameras and introduced a little blur around her hip where the hidden compartment was and her hand when she buried the chip.  With any luck, casual observation would pass it by as inconsequential.  The action was time-consuming and she strained to make her hand motions as abbreviated and covert as possible.

She made it through two of the eight feeds before the sergeant came back with a syringe of some painkiller and injected it into the prone captain.  The drug took a minute for its effects to take place and Leah raced against time, trying to get another one of the feeds blurred before the captain’s eyes finished rolling back down out of their sockets.

The sergeant got Farghan back on his feet, albeit a little unstable and green to the face.  Leah put the finishing touches on the third feed and opened the fourth.

“Now, Captain, please explain to me what you’re doing here.”

“Sir,” Farghan said, his voice taut and weak, “just routine evidence gathering.”

“I would question your techniques, but you’ve gotten rather admirable products in the past,” the man mused.  “There is something I don’t understand, though.  Why did I just get a call from a man who claims his car is being ripped apart by uniformed officers?  I don’t suppose your routine evidence gathering has anything to do with that?”

“No, sir.  I don’t know why they are doing that.  I’ll look into it immediately.”

“Hmm.  Ms. Holloway, would you care to comment?”

Leah looked at Farghan, who turned away from the newcomer and mouthed “You’re dead” at her.  “Sure,” she shrugged, “Mr. Edwards was trying to molest me and I got the drop on him.  I don’t know why the Captain ordered his car ripped apart.”

“How interesting.  One of you is lying, obviously.  I doubt the Captain ordered Edwards’ car dismantled out of gentlemanly outrage.  What does your chip have to do with this?”

“Chip?  Oh, yeah.  I dropped it, remember?  The Captain was helping me find it.”

The man turned and looked around at the monitors which showed a few shots of the house on Orchard Lane and a single wide-angle lens that caught a shot through the bay window of Leah standing with a gun against her back, talking to Ettricks.  The guard who was holding it was off the camera.

“My, my.  Leah, you lead a most interesting life.”  As the feeds rolled forward through the brief gunfight, Leah frantically finished blurring the fourth feed and opened the fifth.  Halfway done.  “Cut this crap, Sergeant,” the man snapped, waving at the feeds.  His amused attitude vanished like mist on a summer day.

The room plunged into blackness as the light provided by the feeds cut out.  The strip lighting on the ceiling flickered into luminescence, brightening until the white glare was painful in contrast to the previously dark room.

“Captain Farghan.  I’ll ask you one more time.  What the hell are you doing here?”  The man could wield authority like a club and he was really laying it on thick now.

The captain sagged against the table.  “Okay.  Okay.  You might as well hear it from the source instead of from me.  Sergeant, play back the conversation Leah had with Ettricks in the house.”

Leah smiled to herself as she realized Farghan’s failed plan.  He wanted to seize control himself and hoped to hide what the chip held from his employers until it was too late.  Fool.  She cleaned a little excess blur from the fifth feed and closed it.  Three more.

The camera feed aimed at the bay windows came back up and filled an entire wall, spanning the multiple monitors.  They all watched as Leah walked up the path, bigger than life, to the front door and knocked.  Farghan turned to look at her and she froze, hoping he hadn’t caught any of her hand motions under the table.  He glowered, mouthed something she didn’t catch and turned back to the monitors.

Leah finished the sixth feed and was nearly done with the seventh by the time the doctor was escorted back upstairs and the feed stopped.

“Fascinating,” the man said.  He turned to face Leah and she froze, cursing to herself.  She was almost done.  She didn’t dare move when the man was looking at her except for slowly closing down the seventh feed.  A little “nervous fidgeting” would be accepted.  There was just one feed left.  “So you actually had a chip containing the key to controlling the world’s population in your hand?”

Leah shrugged.  “I guess so.”

“Where is it?” he asked.

“I told you already, I dropped it and Farghan was helping me find it.  I really need to find it, mister, I’m supposed to make a delivery…”

The man leaned across the table, the force of his personality oppressive and intimidating.  “Do you know who I am?”

“Some big-wig, obviously.”

“My name is Drake Landry.”

“Rings a bell, but no.”

“I’m the Chairman of Simtec.  I own this city.  I own Simtec.  And right now, I own you.  If you don’t give me what I want…”

“Wow.  Well, then if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just mosey on out.  The real-estate trends don’t fit my budget, actually.”

“Very funny, girl.”

“Sir,” Farghan cut in, “her hands.”

“What?  What about her hands?”

“She has code regulators built into both hands.”

“Right.  Okay, hands on the table where we can see them.”

Leah complied, furious.  She had been so close.  Only one feed left.  Now she had to rely on a lucky break that they would be watching one of the doctored feeds when she made the drop.  If only she had thought of fixing the feeds earlier.

“Let’s get this chip found, then.  Sergeant, start from where the feeds pick up after she deals with Edwards,” Drake ordered.  “I’m assuming you watched up to that point.”

“Yes, sir.  She didn’t make the drop prior.”

Leah tried sliding her hands under the table and froze when Drake whirled on her.  With one smooth motion, he drew a pistol from the holster at his belt and pointed it at her head.  “Move the hands and I blow your head off,” he said conversationally.  He waved to one of his aides standing in the door to come over.  “If she moves a finger, shoot her.”

The aide drew his own gun and took a position behind her with the pistol pressed into the base of her skull.  Satisfied that his aide had it under control, Drake holstered his own gun and put his attention back on the monitors.

Leah watched in horrified fascination as the various feeds pulled up on the screens and started shifting from feed to feed as she walked out of the parking lot where Edwards had parked and approached her bike, parked in a corner of the employee parking zone.

“Slow it down to half-speed,” Drake ordered and Leah’s heart sunk.  It wasn’t likely she would be able to distract him at a crucial moment.  Drake was a lot sharper than Farghan was and he’d see right through such a ploy.

The corner where the bike was parked was dark and Leah sat down next to it, obscuring most of her body on all but one of the feeds.  “Pull up that clear feed,” Drake instructed.  “What’s with this camera?  The focus is off.  Sergeant, can you fix that?”

“I can try, sir.  One moment.”  The sergeant worked his console and the camera in question froze and he tried to adjust the focus.  Leah sighed.  The blur she had introduced to her hands and hip stood out like a sore thumb as he swung the focus back and forth.

“Well, Leah, I’ll have to give it to you.  You did an admirable job trying to cover that up.  I almost missed it.  Captain, order your men to search the ground around where Ms. Holloway had her bike parked.  And for God’s sake, order your men off ripping apart Edwards’ car.”

Farghan complied sullenly, wincing as he walked out despite the heavy painkiller.  Leah had a flash of self-satisfaction.  Even if she died here, she probably had effectively prevented Farghan from polluting the gene pool any further.

An officer burst into the room, out of breath from his run from the landing pad.  He snapped a salute and handed a small, foam-wrapped package to the aide standing by the door then backed out.  The aide shut the door in his face and handed the package to Drake.

Leah glanced at the time.  It was three in the afternoon.  In exactly two hours and five minutes the chip would self-destruct.  The search for the chip had taken all day, tense hours where Leah hadn’t been able to sleep.  The aide had put his gun away once it was obvious she couldn’t do anything to interfere with the search and except for a token guard watching her, everyone else had gone to bed to catch a few hours of sleep before the chip was found.

Farghan had gone in for emergency surgery with severe trauma to both testicles.  Apparently he had hemorrhaged shortly after walking out of the debriefing room and had been rushed to the hospital with his scrotum blown up like a water balloon full of blood.

Leah watched through bleary eyes as Drake unwrapped the foam and extracted the tiny datachip.  She had never stopped trying to work out a way to prevent the inevitable through the long hours of the day but now she was staring failure in the face.  She was exhausted from both physical effort and the emotional rollercoaster she had been on since yesterday afternoon.

It was supposed to be a simple job.  Pick up the chip, evade the inevitable hired thugs, make the run to New Bakersfield, drop the chip off, collect her payment and retire to a well-earned sleep at home.  Routine.  Simple.  She’d done similar runs dozens of times before.

Now she was looking at the Chairman of Simtec as he held the miniscule chip up to the light, his face twisted with the concept of imminent world domination.

“You don’t have to do this,” Leah tried.  Maybe Drake had a human side to him, one that wasn’t bent on domination.

Drake laughed.  “Girl, I just need to stamp this chip somehow and the world will be mine.”

So much for Drake having any humanity.  “You’ll have to hack the security envelope first,” Leah pointed out.  “Then you can ‘stamp’ the chip.  Whatever that means.”

Drake lowered the datachip and looked at her.  “How did you hack the envelope?”

It was Leah’s turn to laugh.  “You fool.  There is no way you can stamp the chip.  There isn’t a computer here that could hack through the morphing algorithm before the timer blows the chip.  And even then, you can’t copy the data off it without frying the chip.  Even I don’t know the access codes to copy the data.  I can only look at it.”

“So, how would you do it?”

“Me?  I would hack the security envelope, then open the chip.  From there I would have direct access to the virus and could stamp it.  But I don’t know what stamping a piece of code means, or how you would go about doing it.”

“So why can’t I do it, then?”

Leah shook her head.  “If you have to ask, you’re so far from hacking the envelope that you might as well just give up.”

“I can make you open it.”

“Perhaps, but what good would that do you?  The moment I tried to transfer control of the chip to you, the security would re-engage.”

“Give me your datapad.”

“What?”

“Sergeant, secure Ms. Holloway’s datapad.”

She fought, but she was sitting down and with the two aides holding her immobile in a headlock, the sergeant was able to pull the datapad from her pocket.  Leah watched as Drake put the chip into the back of the datapad.

“Ah.  As I thought.”

Leah relaxed against the grip of the aides holding her, the fight gone.  Her datapad, having been used to crack the envelope earlier had opened the security package automatically.  The aides dropped her and she slumped against the table.

“Touching letter.  Ah… the virus.”

In her mind’s eye, Leah saw what Drake was looking at.  The twisting security envelope around the virus itself.  Looking at it on a datapad, Leah didn’t know if the code would infect Drake, but it was a moot point.  After her fumbling around in it, the entire Simtec computer system was infected and Drake was undoubtedly linked intimately with it.  For sure Drake was infected as well.

“Now, I just need to stamp it, somehow.  Sergeant, play back that section of Ms. Holloway’s conversation with the doctor.”  He listened as the doctor described the imminent doom of the world then waved to the sergeant to turn it off.  “Stamp.  What could he mean?”

“He probably meant to grind the datachip under your heel,” Leah said dully.  Her mind was thick with despair.  Her eyes were heavy and sore from long use without rest.  Even so, in the depths of failure, she fought on, running through scenario after scenario, trying to find some loophole she had overlooked.

“Stamp,” Drake thought aloud, completely ignoring her, “he means to transfer some sort of impression.  What impression could he mean, though?  Something unique, individual from person to person.”

Suddenly, Leah knew how to work the stamp.  The virus worked by creating a nervous feedback from the carrier’s cyberware, making his body do the bidding of the controller.  The controller’s cyberware provided the unique “fingerprint” required to stamp the virus.  To stamp the virus, one simply had to attempt to open it via a cybernetic interface.

Something must have changed on her face because Drake whirled on her and hauled her up over the table until their faces were inches apart.  “Tell me.  You know!  Tell me!”

Leah wasn’t listening.  She worked her hands and found the facsimile of the datachip she had stored what seemed like years ago.  Drake looked down at her hands and the same cognition swept through him.  Through the morphing virus overlaid on her right eye, Leah saw Drake’s vision sweep toward the datapad and his attention focus.  She seized the virus package with the hacking envelope, not even trying to match the twisting virus.

It was done, one way or the other.  It only remained to see if she had managed to beat Drake on the draw.  Leah felt a cold flush rush through her body and she pulled out of Drake’s grasp and sprawled backward into her chair.  Drake threw the datapad down on the table and swiveled his malevolent gaze upon her.

“I did it!” he cried, glee twisting his face into a caricature.  “I own everything!  Everyone!”  He pointed a shaking finger at Leah, cackling laughter shaking from his quivering lips.  “You!  Stand!  Obey your new master!”

Leah squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for her body to obey against her will.  Seconds ticked by and nothing happened.

“I command you!” Drake shouted, face purpling.  “I own you now!  You must obey me!”  She opened her eyes slowly and looked around the room.  Her body remained sitting as she was, sprawled in her chair.  She was still under her own control.

Leah looked up at Drake and took in his frantic assertions.  The corners of her mouth twitched then broke into a smile.

…

The setting sun sprayed colorful graffiti across the sky as Leah drove into New Bakersfield on her bike, the wind pulling her hair out behind her.  She turned off the highway and idled up an access road to an isolated house, letting the bike’s inertia carry her up the low slope.

A man stepped off the porch and approached her as she coasted to a stop.  She threw the kickstand and swung a leg off the bike.  She pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head and handed the man a small package.

“You’re late.”

“I was unavoidably detained.  The chip is still active.”

“Of course.  What happened?”

Leah smiled at the man, an easy up-turning of her lips that spoke volumes.  “I was detained.”

“Was the datachip compromised?”

“No.”

The man shook his head.  “Fine.  How much time is left on the chip?”

Leah glanced at her clock.  “Two hours.”

“Well, thanks, I guess.  Payment is usual?”

“I should charge you more, but no, usual is enough.”

“Right.  It’s done.  Thank you for your services.”

“It was a pleasure.”  Leah got back on her bike and walked it around until she was facing back downhill again.

“A question, Runner.”

Leah revved the engine, impatient to be gone.  “What?”

“Did you open the package?”

“I reset the timer.”

“Anything else?”

Leah turned her head to look back at the man and settled her glasses back down over her eyes.  “Why?”

The man looked away, nervous.  “Ah, nothing.”

“Don’t bother,” Leah said.  She turned her back on the man and drove the bike down the hill.  Behind her, the man stood frozen in place, one hand behind his back, stuck in the motion of drawing the gun hidden there until she vanished over the horizon.