'Smoke and Mirrors' Pt. 3

Part three of 'Smoke and Mirrors', in which we follow Domino after her escape from Koralev's surveillance.

The privacy capsule came back to her with a sort of hyper-clarity; the input from her optics went way beyond those in the Dolldroid. She allowed herself a few seconds to settle into her own body again before moving off; it would take the doorman three minutes or more to get back to her position. Plenty of time.

She dropped her connection with the capsule's system, switching instantly to her own private access node. A few quick prompts and she was shrouded with proxies and stealth programs. Her fingers worked intricate patterns in front of her, supplementing her neural and vocal commands. She gained remote access to the capsule's node under the guise of a maintenance/sys-admin operator and started her scan.

A backtrace showed her no-one had flagged her sojourn or indeed her fake account. She decided to drop a clean-up program on the system anyway, as the logs could be mined by anyone and there seemed little point in compromising the French-Vietnamese rich girl cover without good cause.

Leaving the confines of the capsule, she left her heads-up overlay running and her private uplink open. Using the booth had been useful only insofar as concealing her prone form while providing a focus for the doorman's surveillance. So now she enjoyed the freedom of her own system and all the familiarity, speed and utility it offered her as she melted into the crowds.

Data streams ghosted across the faces around her as she began her preparations for that night's meeting, her physical body nimbly dodging jostles and missteps while her networked body floated serenely among the reams of information she had collated.

Something tugged at her subconscious, drawing her focus back to the physical sphere: a full conversion cyborg, crouched in silent guardianship while the pigtailed girl at his side played with an old gravity ball. His work had been done a long time ago, the cybernetics behind the conversion almost antiquated, old Ninth Column Navy markings running around the tarnished metal where his biceps used to be.

The girl too, seemed to be a relic of a bygone age, her glossy black hair adorned with bubblegum clips to match her simple summer dress. Her fingers, sticky with gum syrup, manipulated the rotations of the ball with a rare, carefree delight.

Domino felt a strong, unexpected surge of melancholy as she regarded the scene and the odd couple seemed to freeze-frame into a snapshot for her. Not knowing if the pain she felt was borne of memory or of fearful portent, she forced herself to sublimate both the feelings and the images they carried. Discipline overwriting sentimentality, for now at least, she wiped the stinging rain drops gathered in her eyes and moved on.

She ducked into a service alley set into the square and padded swiftly into the shadows. Once certain she was concealed from view, Domino shifted her balance and leapt. Her legs propelled her in an explosive acrobatic arc, the motion a miracle of prosthesis. As her palms found the metal of a vent housing several metres up her arms tensed and she flipped her body, extending her ascent while twisting to place her feet beneath her again as she cleared the edge of the roof above. She landed silently, her body in a loose crouch.

Staying low, she moved quickly to look back out over the square. Her eyes found the privacy capsule and scanned back from there to the ramen stand. The doorman was there, his hand pressed to his ear, no doubt already on a call with Koralev, relaying his bad news.

Domino cursed her own lack of focus; she had wasted too much time in getting to her perch and might now be too late to piggyback the call. She started the hack anyway, her mind darting through networks and directories as she launched a simple yet effective eavesdropper program. With no small relief she located his carrier signal and slipped neatly through the standard encryptions surrounding it. Garbled frequency squeals coalesced into the sound of the doorman's voice.

“... gone boss, I'm sorry. I lost her,”

“How? How did you lose her?” Koralev's voice carried a nasty edge.

There was a moment's pause as the bouncer considered his response.

“It's... it's kinda a long story, boss.”

“I'm sure it is,” she heard Koralev sigh theatrically. “It doesn't matter now. I knew she would make you sooner or later. Pays to send a message though, doesn't it?”

“Sure does, boss.”

“Head back now, Dimitri. The club's getting busy.”

Domino watched the decidedly uncertain Dimitri push his way back through the crowds. She sat back on her heels, relaxed for a moment and confident that she could move freely now, away from Koralev's prying eyes. The whole process of ditching the tail had taken too much of her time and now she would have to act quickly to set everything in motion for the meeting at the 37 Lotus Massage Parlour.

Her brief moment of respite at an end, she dropped the two stories back down into the alley, carrying the energy of her landing forward as she broke into a sprint; she had less than five minutes to reach one of her safe houses. Any longer, and she would enter the meeting unprepared which could so easily lead to failure. This was too important. The plan had to work.

Copyright © A. Flood 2010