After a night spent pin-balling from locale to locale in the dark of a citywide curfew, the never-ending glare of the Comm/Ent screens was as stark as it was welcoming, though the comfort remained cold. The broadcasts were ceaseless, recycling all the power-injected news of the day at normal speed for the sake of perpetual reinforcement.
Agent Steel found an alley to hide the Charger in as they planned their next move.
“Here’s Plan A and B,” Lita said. “A: Let’s consider the White Coat legit. We could be getting into the back end of Ace’s operations. And if we can't find something concrete to work with down there, something to deal her a helluva blow and get the word out, we dip. B: Let’s say he isn’t a White Coat. If 22 don’t lead to the module broadcast controls, we go tearing through here ‘till we find somewhere we can jack into, freak some shit, and send the message out citywide.”
Steele nodded, knocking back a sedative-filled shot of water. “Whatever we do, let’s make sure we don’t get into anything we can’t shoot our way out of. Ready, Devenreux?”
In the dark of the alleyway, her meek features hardened into a determined glower. She looked up to Steele, then to Lita, then back again. “I think so. I don’t think I got any shock left in me.” She sighed, her breath heavy. “Let’s do this.”
“For the Bright Organic Tomorrow, baby.” Lita smiled, resting a gloved hand on the revolutionary’s shoulder. Devenreux put on a brave face and patted the grip of her holstered Beretta.
The trio locked the car up and hit the pavement. They had pulled into the dead-end alley of Building 28; three doors up with dead-ends between each building. They counted down the door numbers as they went until they hit what should have been 22, only to find 20.
“Figure it’s another VR trick she’s pulling?” Lita asked.
Steele chewed on the thought. “No.” came the reply. “Not here. The illusions are already up on display,” gesturing to the meaninglessly colorful billboards behind them. Suddenly, there came a whine. A soft, subtle mechanical whine. He cocked his head towards the alley, the ladies following suit. He perked his ear and ran it along the faux-brick wall, Devenreux covering the other. Soon, the whine became a clicking from behind one of the bricks. The light gray stopped in parallel to the leather-clad agent. They gave each brick a push, the clicks subsiding as numbered panels came out from the walls. Their digital screens had room for only four digits.
“You remember his number?” Steele quizzed.
“Yes I do,” she replied.
“Punch it in.”
They both tapped in 2483 and hit the green key. Quiet as a mouse, a slab of asphalt slid away, revealing a blackened entrance, with a single stairwell. All three wolves looked at one another. Each nodded to the other and slowly set foot onto the staircase in the pit, descending further into the darkness.
Out came a small flashlight from Steele, the white rays revealing only walls and stairs. It felt like a crypt from an old Gothic novel, safe for the cobwebs, glyphs, and the sounds of a savage beast waiting at the bottom of the stairs. When the patch of road slid shut, the loneliness of their walk down the never-ending flight brought a chill to their spines.
“Watch it.” Roger whispered. “Last step.”
The three wolves’ new terra firma was ice-cold. “She’s tiled.” Lita remarked. The stairwell had given way to a lonely corridor, the walls tiled just as the floor was in an alternating checkerboard of black and white, a door at the hallway’s end.
When they had reached it, it was locked. There was a door knob, but no keyhole. Steele handed the light off to Devenreux while he pulled out his lock-picking gear regardless. He slipped the thin black wire into the crack between the door and the threshold. He felt the wire wrap itself around the latch bolt before he pressed a claw-sized button on the bottom of the wire. A thin wisp of smoke seeped out from the crack before the door slid in towards the room.
At first, silence. The room was sparse; two desks and two computer monitors, complete with mouse and keyboard, all sat dead center in the room. Treading ever so lightly, they made their way into the room. And there, propped up in the corner behind the monitors was a black wolf. A black wolf dressed in a white button-up, gray slacks, and black loafers, with his glasses sat on the desk corner as he rested, arms folded and wide snout pointed downwards.
His team’s first instinct was to draw their peacemakers, but Steele waved them off. He looked to Devenreux and pointed towards the slumbering White Coat; he wanted her to do the honors.
“Hey, Mister.” she whispered, gently shaking his shoulder. He snorted, snored, and grumbled, but he didn’t wake. Devenreux threw some more confidence on her voice. “Mr. 2483, I need to talk to you about the terms.”
“Z’at’s Chet, remember Lucy?” he mumbled, eyes still shut. “Whaddya…what’s up?”
“I heard there was trouble in the cell.” she answered.
He let out a muted scoff before replying. “Oh, nothing. Was just chatting with the boys. Poor guy get that stomach checked?”
She recalled reports of the guard’s indigestion with a soft smile. “He’s been taken care of.”
“Good…good” he trailed off, back into slumber. Roger decided to try his luck as “Jack.” The gray agent crouched down next to Chet as his head tilted away from him and towards the corner of the wall.
“Hey Chet, you feelin’ alright?” he asked innocently.
It was in the black wolf’s slumber that he tipped his hand. “Jack…Roger.”
“So you know,” Steele sighed.
“Yeah.” Chet replied, eyes still closed. “One of the guys recognized you from a run-in. Tower 8X ring any bells?”
The gray-furred agent nodded. “Quiet well.”
“Changed plans.” he continued. “The chip-fry was real though. She can’t hear me.”
“Was the shock part of the deal?” Steele pressed, his Mauser drawn.
The black engineer shook his head. “Like a special effect gone wrong.”
“Why you not up and at ‘em, then?”
“Suppressing vitals,” he replied. “Don’t want to give off a signature now, there's a slim chance it could revive the chip.”
“But aren’t you working for dear Mother Acc?”
Chet scoffed again. “I took the assignment because I feel for everyone out there. You’d be surprised how many of us behind the scenes would do more to stop all this madness if we could. If only.”
Steele holstered his piece. “How much was simulation?”
“Lucy was real, I was real, members T-Bird, J.D., Snowball, the council including Draco, and a few others were real. The most of the security team were all real, but mostly plants for the state, that’s the cadre who ID’d you. The rest was all reorganized matter.”
Lita and Devenreux stood utterly confused. Steele kept his eyes on Chet. “Tell me, could there be simulations made of Draco?”
The engineer nodded.
“Were there in the digitally refurbed compound?”
Another nod. “Wouldn’t be caught dead with all those hippies.”
“What did the real Nate want?”
“You.” Chet chuckled. “When he found out who you were.”
“And the Reformation?”
The black wolf shrugged. “Just another part of the roundup.”
“Was Ray…real?” Devenreux nervously cut in.
Chet shook his head. “Sounds like one of the stock digital actors. Didn’t get a full itinerary, just my cast list for the mission.”
“How can we stop it?” asked Steele. “We want to send a message out to tell everyone to stay away from Empire Square.”
“You’ve come to the right place.” Chet said. “Glad you caught my slip of the tongue. Terminal 1 is for the recording of video, Terminal 2 is for its transmission. We cut emergency announcements down here.”
“Why were you taken here?”
The black-furred White Coat could only smirk. “I have work in the morning. Can’t be late now, can I?”
“Alright,” an impatient Lita cut in. “Where we starting?”
“Terminal 1 is offline, Terminal 2 is connected to the network. Record with the camera on 1, transfer to 2. We can pass it off as the Reformation ‘hacking’ again. I’ll be here when you need to go through the broadcast sequencing.”
The team set to work and fired up the first terminal. When the camera was ready, and enough light from the flashlights shone on Devenreux, she took her seat before the terminal. Lita gave her the thumbs up and Steele simply nodded. They had been there with the brawn, stealth, and know-how to get them out of their immediate perils, but now the whole operation had come down to the young, light-furred girl with the thin snout and the powerful voice.
She took a breath, and pressed Record.
“We’re in control of the airwaves now. Tonight has brought us great misfortune and even greater peril. All who wish to live truly free lives in this great city, I beg of you, do NOT go to Empire Square today at 1 PM. I was alerted to a unique feature of the fencing surrounding the park. The electric charge used to keep vandals from climbing the wall can be weaponized against citizens’ implant-chips, and I have been given cause for concern that this mechanism will be used against us.
“Earlier in the evening, a string of sudden events within the Reformation’s current base, including the capture of one of our recruits at the behest of candidate Nathaniel Draco, whose true allegiances were revealed to lie with the status quo and not our campaign for change, has made me realize there are many daggers at our backs.
“I repeat, DO NOT go to Empire Square at 1 PM today, for it could cost you your lives. If those on the Board demonstrate that they are truly willing to welcome us, open armed and without the slightest chance for hostility, I will be first in line to break bread. Until then, to the Bright Organic Tomorrow.”
She stopped the recording. Her audience of two nodded approvingly. Even Chet, in his hibernating state, softly bobbed his head. Now it was time to broadcast. Through soft, mumbled, but distinct instructions, the black-furred engineer gave the team every override code and password needed to get the video into the emergency bulletin network. And though they couldn’t have known it then, it would be the easiest part of staving off the largest mass execution in Haven history…
TO BE CONTINUED…