Injection - Epoch:Human Experimental Short Story

Injection

I hadn’t seen a natural body of water in years. Certainly not such a big one. The last had been one of the Great Lakes, I think, but that had been so teeming with urban filth that I’d hardly count it. The Pacific, however, was a whole other thing.
I don’t know what Venice Beach looked like before the shadow of New Angeles was first cast over it, but I can tell you what its remains looked like that night, as I stood on the edge of the city and looked out over the ocean. The water was pitch black, as was the sky, its dark depths only disturbed by the shimmering silver reflection of Luna, dancing on the soft waves that curled up ever so slightly in the wind before they rushed silently against the concrete walls hundreds of meters below my feet. A serene breeze carried cool ocean air into the land, and it washed the heavy city smog off of me and blew it back between the towering buildings behind me. The walls at the shoreline belonged to the Caelis Industries warehouse, a modern-age monolith that had been placed on the ground of old LA long before it was forsaken. Its base was surrounded by thick cement walls and layers upon layers of barbed wire fences, placed to keep the desperate locals off the premises. The ground was sandy where the asphalt ended, sandy and dry and drenched in the shadow of the humongous platform overhead. Between the old buildings hung a dark fog that was so solid that even my enhanced eyes couldn’t penetrate its deeper sections.
The Caelis company needs a place to ship their products from. So they still use a warehouse that is connected to the old city, because it has to be right on the water. Today, that building is much more than a simple depository, of course, as it was at some point turned into a towering pillar that connects into the main mass of the new city.
The City on Stilts, they call it. A fitting description. High Town is another less popular nickname, but that name better suits what remains of old Los Angeles, in my opinion, with all the Salt-snorting scum that gathers there these days. New Angeles is really a high town, though, in the sense that it was built a hundred and fifty meters above ground, of course, after LA went to shit over the course of the twenty-first century. And when the new city thrived and the old city died, they cut off the elevators, one by one. I’m glad that I didn’t grow up down there, in the shade. I was never a part of that conflict.
“Alec?” Jackal’s voice was sharp in my head. Enough to tear me from my trance. “Taking in the scenery? We ain’t got all night. Get a move on.”
“I’m not exactly eager to go down there,” I told him as I leaned forward over the railing that lined the platform’s edge. Every one of the hundreds of little windows along the building’s facade had yellow light radiating behind it. It was gloomy on the outside, but not within. “From what I can see out here, they might be running at full capacity,” I said. “You expect me to just waltz right in and nobody will say anything?”
“No,” he said. “Well, yeah, you’ll use the front door. But you stay away from the people in there.” He sighed loudly. “Just… be chilly, man. My schedules say there’s hardly a dozen people on duty tonight. This’ll be easy. A quick little hit-and-run.”
I bit my lip. “How long will the upload take?” I asked. His response was immediate. “Two seconds, probably. The program will spread to every single product’s firmware as soon as you inject it into the shipment crate. The real problem is the SID.”
“Yo, you’re the Cutter! I expect you to make quick work of that!”
“I will. Just do your job. I’ll take care of mine.” Jackal is a difficult person sometimes. He’s one of those people who will hold back information to make a job seem easier than it is. I don’t know why exactly. Maybe it’s because he’s always so eager to get going. Always on his toes. Always hyped up about the next opportunity to show off his “mad skillz.” Not really the kind of guy you’d want backing you as a Cutter. But I’ve known him a while, and to tell the truth, his skillz really are mad.
I was well-equipped tonight, though that didn’t necessarily make me feel more secure. I wore jeans, a shirt and a hoodie, sneakers and a scarf that covered most of my face. I was dressed for crime, all in black. My hair had been cut that morning, reduced to a black stubble. It felt weird, but in a good way. My eyes worked perfectly, and so did the little amplifiers in my ears. The newest addition I had made was hidden underneath wide sleeves. Two little bolts on each side of each wrist. Known as Snaps. Help the hands to move faster and coordinate more easily. I’d been spending all my money on better augs recently. Couldn’t get enough of them, especially the cool-looking ones. Seems almost ironic, compared to what people like me and Jackal stand for. But that’s the way it goes.

I went through a big door with a little window in it and came into a rather large hall with a nice blue carpet and naked stone walls. There was nobody at the small metal-and-plastic reception desk. Weird, but then again, it was the middle of the night. Plus, why did a warehouse need a reception desk? This room only served the purpose of providing a space between the main entrance and the elevator. I quickly strode across, eying the walls for cameras, though I knew they were too well-hidden for me to see. “Did you hack the cameras?” I asked. “And the elevator,” I added as I pressed the button to call it. On cue, the doors slid open with a satisfying chime, and Jackal answered, “What the hell did you think I was doing the whole time that you stood outside and admired the fraggin’ coastline?” I didn’t respond, but stepped into the elevator, which quickly picked up all the speed it needed to reach the lowest level of the building within seconds. The overhead monitor rushed through the numbers from 48 to 1 in about six seconds, then the cabin abruptly slowed. Only when I had already reached my destination did I notice there had been a very soft track of piano music playing in the background. It immediately faded out when the chime rung again and I stepped outside.
A hallway made of completely uncovered cement. Four doors. This was where it got tricky. I had to be careful on this level, because Caelis executives weren’t stupid enough to leave their valuable shipment un-guarded. At least that was what Jackal’s stolen records said, and the cameras, too, I hoped. I checked in. “Jackal. Guards?”
“Of course. Not patrolling, though, just lazing around in some back room. Four of them, hanging out.” He cackled. “One guy is chilling inside the main storage unit, where you’re headed. Don’t worry, his gun is on the floor next to him. These guys are no big deal.”
That gave me some confidence. I walked down the length of the hallway and sharpened my hearing, the implants on both sides buzzing a little bit, as if excited. There was nothing there at first, then a few fluctuations reached my brain and I realized it was the group of men laughing beyond another door. They were far off. I checked the signs on the doors on both sides of the hallway. Storage Unit A. That was the one.
The storage unit was on the end of another bleak hallway, lined itself with metal crates full of who-knows-what. Each and every one of them had the Caelis symbol on it, a logo depicting a sun peeking over the side of a strange, sharp-edged cloud. “Careful,” Jackal echoed in my mind, “there’s a single guy behind the next door. He has his back to you, but… just… be cat-like.”
“Cat-like?”
“You know what I mean.”
I hit the button that opened the door, and it slid aside with a barely audible squeak. I cringed for a second in anticipation of the guard’s reaction, but nothing happened, so I peeked outside. It was a big hall in the shape of a horseshoe, with a huge bay door that was open toward the sea. The walls outside had a gap here that would let shipments be transferred to the huge freighters that would arrive in the morning. The dark water lapped up against the inside of the U-shape, and the broad-backed, bald guard stood at the far end of the room, bending over the railing in his thick blue vest. He held a cigarette in one huge hand and his piddly little assault rifle lay on the ground by his feet, as Jackal had said. No big deal.
I slipped across the well-lit floor and into a space between two big stacks of crates, then looked around for orientation. The crates here had big plastic tags on them. Jaw implants. Yuck. Sneaking through the rows of boxes, I came to a big container which had nothing written on it, but a large metal flap covered part of the front. Lifting it, I revealed the circular, glowing input platform underneath. Blue and orange lights danced on the ripply surface, as though calling for me to join them. “I got it.”
“Plug in, then.”
I pulled up my sleeve and placed my hand upon the cold metal. Immediately, the light grew stronger and soft electric currents held my hand in place, making sure it didn’t slip off. I felt the information flood my brain. Product code: CCM-109. Product name: Cranium Control Module. Purpose: Enhancement of processing power and connectivity between brain and connected networks. Firmware build: 1.02. Installation at twelve percent. I knew all this already. With the huge shipments corporations like Caelis sent out every day, they often performed the final stages of production, such as the installation of firmware, while the product was en route. I just hoped Jackal was right, and we could hack into the installation from here.
“Alec!” his nervous voice cut through the flood of numbers and code that didn’t mean much to somebody without the compatible implants and the right tech knowledge. “Open the channel!” Irritated, I tried to concentrate on the stream of communication between Jackal and me, and to ignore all the input from the control panel. It took some effort, but I linked up the two channels in my mind, transmitting what came out of the container to Jackal. I closed my eyes and relaxed my body. It was a strain on the mind to proxy so much data at once.
Jackal was silent for a while, which I suppose I was thankful for. There was enough going on in my brain right now as it was. But after a few minutes, I grew impatient. “What’s going on?” I asked, “you doing it?”
“Trying to sort out all this info,” he said, “they mixed in a bunch of shit that has literally nothing to do with the CCMs. Guess they wanted to slow down people like us. Weird method, though.”
“Do you need to do that? Just head for the server functions and hack your way in!”
“Hey, man, I’m doing this to make it easier on your brain. Don’t want you collapsing under nine hundred gigs per second.”
He was exaggerating, but he wasn’t wrong, so I shut up and waited a few more seconds. Then, like a river drying up, the data stream calmed down, and the strands and bits of info volatilized, leaving behind a clear stream of code that went through my mind like lubricated butter. It was like somebody had turned the shower from a demonic heat to a pleasant chill, but the shower was in my head.
“Okay,” Jackal said, his voice softer now, “They got a pretty conventional SID here. Guardian build. No adaptive AI or anything. Should be no more than a minute.” I exhaled in relief and leaned against the container with my free hand. Sweat dripped from my forehead and made a slight plip when it hit the ground. Time ticked away. I watched the streams of code pass through my mind, code Jackal tossed at the System Intrusion Defense mechanism like thousands of little poisonous darts. I looked up after a while and peered across the U-shape of the room. The smoking guard still stood there, just throwing his cigarette butt in the water now, but he hadn’t seen me. Of course not. I was a hundred meters away and stood in the shadow of a dozen crates. It looked like this would go off without a hitch.
And of course, the moment that thought crossed my mind, I had jinxed it. The guard, who’d been watching the smoldering butt of his cigarette drown in the black ripples, hectically looked up and around, and then bent down to grab his rifle off the floor. Somebody must have messaged him, but I couldn’t imagine who or why. Nobody had discovered me on the way in, after all. “Jackal?” I said quietly, though the communication was in my head, of course, and nobody but me and him would hear it. “Check the cameras again? Something’s going on.” There was a long pause, then I realized he’d completely ignored me and was too focused on the cut to even realize I was speaking. “Jackal!” I repeated. “What?!” he shouted, startled and upset that he was being interrupted. “I’m almost through, what do you want?”
“The guard in the storage unit is acting weird. He picked up his gun. Wait, he’s…”
The man, his bald head gleaming in the bright light thrown into the middle of the hall by big overhead lamps, went toward the door that I had come through and stood there, upright and solid, like a soldier standing at attention. The crates with the jaw implants were stacked too high, so I couldn’t see the door entirely, but I imagined somebody was coming through, as the guard now moved his lips and nodded. I turned up my audio implants again, but their signal was distorted.
“Frag,” I whispered out loud, then went back to Jackal. “There’s more guys here. Newcomers. They have a jammer, I can’t hear them talk.”
“What?” Jackal replied. “No, that’s not right. The logs showed just the five guards down here, and so did the… oooohh.”
“Don’t tell me.”
“Looking at the cameras now. Yeah. You got company. Big time.” I ground my teeth in anticipation. I hate unexpected turns like this more than Jackal hates BlackSID. Of course, as a DataCutter, working from home, he reveled in the challenge. Myself, not so much.
Straining my arm, I stood on my toes and tried to catch a glimpse of the door without letting go of the control console - but then, my friendly new visitors did me the favor of revealing themselves, anyway. With loud, clunking steps, they moved into the light in the center of the U-shape, right up to the railing above the water. There were four of them, a captain and three underlings. Their fancy Composite Type A armor was painted a dark brazen color and shimmered in the light. These suits were sturdy but still granted them all the mobility they could need. Their helmets were sleek, with blood red visors that covered their faces. Each of the underlings carried a large, vastly intimidating assault rifle, whose exact model I couldn’t make out from where I stood. The captain, however, held a truly fearsome weapon, one that was unmistakable for any other. It was an Induction Coilgun, manufactured by the age-old weapons giant Heckler & Koch. I shivered at the thought of the massive plasma bolts that thing would propel at my face if these troops found me out.
In consideration of their equipment, it was clear that these guys were ARES soldiers. The government loves its abbreviations, and this one stands for Aggressive Response Enforcement Subdivision, a highly sophisticated and massively enhanced tract of the SWAT that basically represent everything criminals like me stand against. These kinds of forces aren’t just deployed to provide security for a random corporation, no matter how tight it is with the government. These men are elites. They come in to stop the biggest bombs from going off. Somebody had tipped them off that we would be here tonight.
“We gotta bail!” I told Jackal. “Forget the fragging upload! Get me out of here!”
“Shush,” he said, “I’m almost through. Just a few seconds and you can inject.”
“Damn it, Jackal… come on…!”
The captain stepped forward and looked around the room. Only then did I realize that they most certainly had ocular implants, and that they most certainly would read my heat signature through all the crates I stood behind. I watched in terror as the captain’s golden-gloved hand slowly rose and his index finger was extended in my exact direction. The soldiers released the safeties on their guns. Then they began walking calmly toward me, around the crate stacks. I had nowhere to run, and they knew it. Suddenly, the captain’s voice boomed through the hall. “Citizen! You are under arrest! Stop all disruptive actions at once and come out with your hands raised! We are authorized to apply lethal force at the first sign of defiance!” His voice implant was so loud my ears hurt, and I felt sorry for the guard that stood right next to him. But only for a moment.
It took me some courage, but I cupped my free hand around my mouth and shouted back at him. “Go get shit-faced on Shiver and fuck a cat in the ass!” I suggested. Then I focused on the data stream in my head, ignoring the quickening paces of the soldiers behind my back. In that same moment, the SID cracked open, and Jackal gave a satisfied “Go!” from the other end of the connection. I immediately unlocked the virus program and injected it into the stream, sending corrupted firmware to each of the little tiny Cranium Control Modules. Then, I violently disconnected by simply tearing my hand away from the console. I ignored the tingling pain and slapped the metal cover shut, then sprinted off to the side. I ran right past one of the approaching soldiers, whose enhanced reflexes allowed him to immediately raise his rifle and fire, but what he didn’t expect was that I jumped and dove right over the railing and into the water on the other side.
The icy blackness hit me right in the face and washed away all the noise from outside, including the alarm siren, which I could only barely hear, muffled by the water as it was. In the dark, I could hardly see anything, but I knew that the ARES’ enhancements would soon detect me, so I swam as hard as I have ever had to in my life, diving for the canal that led out into the ocean, too afraid to open my eyes or go up for air. I just trusted in my sense of orientation and that it would bring me outside. As I struggled forward, bullets began spraying the area behind me, but none of them hit me, whether it was pure luck or the lingering obstruction of the soldiers’ view. I tasted salt, and my first instinct was that I had blood in my mouth, but then I remembered that I was swimming in seawater.
I kicked and flailed as fast as I could until I felt like I was going to faint, then I finally had the guts to burst out of the darkness and look around. I was outside, a good distance from the bay door, floating atop the silent curls of water. I sent Jackal a little laugh to show him I was more or less okay. “Not a very good idea to keep that big door open all the time,” I told him. The soldiers hadn’t followed me out or anything, but it wouldn’t be long until they came after me by different means, so I let the waves carry me swiftly ashore.

I stumbled onto pebbles and sand and picked up my pace, stripping off the wet hoodie and popping my ears. There was nobody in sight, not even any lowlife junkies hanging out to share a Silver Bullet. Good, I didn’t want to get stabbed just yet. I wrung out my clothing as much as I could and proceeded down the dark, silent street. I shivered as the cold shadow of the city overhead and the icy water on my body combined to suck all the warmth out of me. “What now?” I asked Jackal, and he took so long to answer that I began to doubt we were still connected. “Now you’re going to have to find a way back up,” he said. “You’re stuck in dark-town, Alec.”
I sighed, staring at the cracked asphalt that passed by underneath my feet. “We made it, though,” I said. “When all their customers start having mental meltdowns, Caelis will be virtually out of business.”
“Yeah. This will send out a strong message. Well done.”
Well done, indeed. Except for the fact that I was stuck in the worst place I could imagine, with no way back to civilized society. No legal way, that is.

----------

Written by Samuel Gheist (aka. mrironglass/polltergheist)