Nio turned off the television and heard the words repeat in her mind. “What they’ve accomplished and what we’ve learned from them so far.”
Nothing! she screamed silently. Nothing! Because it’s meaningless! We’re people, and we can’t teach you about yourselves any more than any other person! Whether we’re successes or failures says nothing more about humanity than whether any other human is a success or a failure. Successes or failures on whose definition? Some arbitrary comparison with a person who’s been dead for centuries? What if we’re perfectly happy with the choices we’ve—
“Is it bad that I didn’t realize who you were until just now?”
A woman stood in the doorway of her hospital room. Nio blushed the moment she realized someone had been silently watching her fume. She exhaled and forcibly unclenched her fists.
“Not really,” she said, trying not to feel awkward.
The woman stepped inside. She looked to be about Nio’s age. She wore a smart blue blazer over jeans and cowgirl boots.
“Everything makes more sense now,” she said.
“Sense?”
“Just . . . how you were able to do what you did.”
Nio scowled. “Do I know you?”
“Sorry.” The woman stepped forward with an extended hand. “I’m Officer Melendez. Of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. We spoke on the phone.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.”
Nio reached to take the officer’s extended hand. As she did so, the handcuffs on her other arm clinked against the bed, reminding both women that she was still a suspect in a serious crime.
Officer Melendez pushed her dark hair behind her ears. “No, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t’ve opened my mouth like that. And I didn’t mean to intrude. I just wanted to see how you were doing and let you know that we turned everything over to Interpol.”
That was good news.
“They say anything?”
Melendez shook her head. “Not yet, but I know they’re pretty busy. I gave them your statement, the news reports on the family in the UK, photographs and scans of the physical evidence. I also called Scotland Yard and made sure they were aware.”
“Any nibbles?”
She scrunched her face. “Not really.”
Nio shrugged. “Not surprising, I guess. What about priors?”
Melendez tilted her head slightly as if confused. “I didn’t think we had a suspect.”
“Whoever did this didn’t get here in one jump. It’s too complicated. The whole infrastructure and the planning and ideas behind it would’ve taken months. Tools had to be built. The games and interfaces had to be designed. The locations and players had to be scouted.” She paused. “And the victims. All of that didn’t come from nothing. Something led to this.”
“You’re saying it’s like how serial killers always have a few fumbling practice kills before they get good enough to be noticed.”
“This is too well-orchestrated to be a first attempt. He or she or they have set something like this up before—or tried to. Look for the same M.O. anywhere with a technically complex infrastructure: East Asia, Europe, North America. It’s pretty arcane, so my guess is, your suspects won’t be too hard to find. The hard part will be connecting any of them to it.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because they have money. A lot of it. Black market hackers aren’t cheap, especially if you pay them enough to keep them quiet.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you like this, but I’ve been told that I’m not supposed to be working on it any more.”
Nio paused. She glanced to the window and back again. “Right.”
That was why Melendez had come, to tell Nio the investigation was DOA.
“We just don’t have jurisdiction here. As much as I’d love to tell the computer guys at Scotland Yard to start taking apart the Setera household server, I don’t have the legal standing even to make a request. Technically, a crime hasn’t been committed on Canadian soil. Outside of this misunderstanding with the military—”
“I didn’t hack Northern Air Command.”
“I believe you. I think the attack on your life pretty well sold it to everyone else, too. But outside of that, all we have is that you were a remote witness to crimes that took place on foreign soil.”
“Surely, you realize that’s intentional,” Nio said. “Spreading it across international jurisdictions like that.”
“Yeah. Probably.”
“So . . . what? We don’t want to upset anyone’s nationalism so these guys just get away with it?”
“It goes to Interpol. It’s up to them to coordinate. I’m sorry. I wish there was more that I could do.”
Nio sighed. She nodded.
“I’ll follow up with them in a few days,” Melendez said, “at least make them acknowledge receipt.”
“You think that’ll make a difference?”
“No. But it’ll make sure they can’t pretend they didn’t know when shit gets worse and these guys kill again. With a paper trail, and enough bodies . . .” Her voice fell away.
“Why does everything have to be a giant flaming pile of crap before anyone will do anything?” Nio rubbed her eyes. “I’m sorry. Don’t answer that. I’m not mad at you.”
“Oh, I get it. I try to remind myself that it’s easier for us, the ones who see the damage up close: the people, the faces . . . To everyone else, it’s just ‘someone was attacked somewhere.’ They can’t really engage with it. So nothing happens. Nothing changes.”
“Does reminding yourself of that work?
“Not really . . . But for what it’s worth, I think what you did was pretty damned amazing.”
Nio looked down at her cotton-wrapped abdomen. “Naw, it was just dumb luck.”
“Not the attack on your life. I meant tracking them down like you did. Saving those people. I wouldn’t’ve thought to program the telepresence bot. I would’ve fumbled around with the tools and ended up watching that woman get crushed like a watermelon.”
“It’s nice of you to say. But it hasn’t amounted to much.”
“It did to her. And to the Setera family. Part of me wants to call them just to make sure they understand what they owe you.”
“Please don’t.”
“Of course.” Melendez looked down. “I know it’s not my place. And I understand you like to keep a low profile.”
“It just makes things easier,” Nio said softly, glancing to the TV. “There’s fallout.”
“Fallout?”
“Every time one of us is on TV, there’s always some kind of fallout.”
The two women were quiet a moment.
“Out there somewhere,” Nio said, “people are still playing the game. It hasn’t stopped.”
“I know. But maybe that means we’ll get lucky and someone will make a mistake.”
“Can you do something for me?”
“If I can.”
“Send the case files and your notes and everything to Special Agent Orlando Quinn at the US Science Control Agency. Can you do that?”
Melendez thought for a moment. “Officially, he’s supposed to request them from Interpol, so I’d need a reason. You think some sort of advanced science was used?”
“Can you just do it?”
“Sure.” Melendez pressed her lips together with a nod. “I’ll think of something to tell my boss. I’m sorry we can’t do more.”
“It’s not your fault. I appreciate that you came all this way to tell me in person.”
“Least I could do.”
Melendez turned to leave as Nio’s tablet beeped.
“I hope that’s good news,” Melendez said, but sensing her welcome had expired, she stepped out the door and left.
Nio thought briefly of turning the TV back on to see if the “special report” on her and her siblings was still running. She grabbed the tablet instead.
Speak of the devil. True to his word, the ever-earnest Orlando Quinn had sent the files on his murder case. It seemed as though some kind of giant creeping mass had eaten its way across a rural county in Texas. The point of origin was a mineralized corpse bearing multiple signs of violence. An autopsy had been completed at some difficulty, it seemed, since the corpse was as hard as a rock and slightly radioactive. But Quinn, or someone on his team, had thought to have it scanned by a paleontologist, like a fossil, and the result was an extraordinarily detailed three-dimensional render of the body, complete with internal structure. The autopsy had been completed digitally.
Nio opened the 3D file. “Cool.”
The most interesting feature of the body was not the crushed larynx, or that the cause of death had not been suffocation but rather a heart attack subsequent to severe trauma. Nor was it even that the scan had worked so well, the medical examiner could see the plaques of cholesterol on the man’s arteries. What stood out immediately were the nested oblong spheroids inside the torso, surrounding the stomach. The medical examiner noted that these were likely due to the man being violently shaken while the anomaly was mineralizing him from the inside out. Every so often, the force was enough to dislodge the mineral layer, causing a shift. Given the damage to the man’s esophagus, and the fact that finger depressions were clearly visible on the throat, it seemed the murderer had forced the anomalous material down the victim’s throat and then held it shut while shaking him with so much force that it caused the spheroid misalignments as it grew, like three-dimensional tree rings. It was, as the report noted, “an act of extreme violence and rage suggesting psychological instability.” The pathologist, someone named M. Wong, added that there was “a very high chance the person or persons responsible would kill again.” There was nothing to indicate the identity of the attacker. However, impressions left by his fingers indicated he was wearing a style of gloves popular with the military.
Nio zoomed in on the digital cast made from the impressions on the victim’s throat. The fingertips of the gloves had a scale-like pattern that looked familiar. She opened a search bar and began to look for the manufacturer, if only to see just how popular they were. She had barely typed two words before an alarm pierced her ears, causing her to drop her tablet, which slid off her bed and fell to the floor. She looked up to see the soldiers outside her door talk briefly into a radio before running down the hall, leaving her completely defenseless.
“Hey! Where are you going?”
She tugged once on her handcuffs, which were attached to the bar of her bed. Her chest felt tight, her stomach turned, and she knew she was having some kind of panic attack.
The alarm.
The sound reminded her of her confinement on the ship. Her conscious mind knew it was silly to react this way, but she couldn’t help it. Her heart raced and she tried to get free, but she couldn’t move, which only exacerbated her dread. A strange sensation came over her then, like a cold wave. But it wasn’t new. She had felt it once before, right after she was stabbed, when the implant she designed had ruptured, spilling its contents into her nervous system and triggering a seizure.
“No,” was all she could say as her muscles contracted and she started shaking violently.
But she was not conscious for any of it.
When she awoke, she had no idea how long it had lasted. As her hearing slowly returned, the hospital alarm intruded on her thoughts, and her heart raced again. This time, she took control of herself immediately with several slow, deep breaths in succession, which brought her back to the immediate problem: She was handcuffed to the bed.
Nio immediately scanned for anything within reach that would be small enough to trigger the small, round release on the handcuffs, but the officers and staff had been very thorough. It seemed as though the nurses assigned to her had cared for prisoners before and were experienced enough to avoid any obvious mistakes. Nio pulled herself up with a groan to get a better look around the room. The movement sent a shearing pain through her abdomen, like she’d been stabbed all over again, and she wondered if she had just tore open her stapled wound.
That was it.
Nio lifted her gown and ripped off the taped gauze with a grimace. A row of staples held a long, swollen incision closed. The doctors hadn’t simply repaired the stab wound. They’d also operated to clear the leakage from the implant, which necessitated reopening the crescent-shaped scar left from the original surgery. She immediately started prying one of the staples loose. Her mouth opened involuntarily with the pain, and she almost screamed. What came out instead sounded like the bellow of a wounded animal. She was beginning to doubt her decision when she hear shouts down the halls. Something was happening. Nio pushed her fingernail under the staple and pulled so hard that she tore her skin. Blood seeped, staining her gown, as she pulled a torn bit of her own skin from the bent staple using her teeth. She pressed hard on the incision with one hand while holding the staple between her molars, making a small rod, which she inserted into the narrow hole on the handcuffs. But the staple was too big, and Nio had to bite down again to flatten it.
She tasted blood, but her last effort did the trick. The sliver of metal entered the hole and the handcuffs came free.
Shouting.
Nio turned to look out the window to the hall. Something was definitely going on. Lights were blinking up and down the hall, almost like…
Her lips pursed.
Like a runway, she thought.
They were directing whoever saw them toward the end of the hall. But these were not emergency lights. They were the normal fluorescent bulbs in their ceiling panels.
Just then, Nio saw the small black dome hiding the wall-mounted camera at the back corner of the hall and stopped. A terrible maggot of a thought wriggled into her brain.
Am I in the game?
Was a new player right then trying to save her from whatever threat worked its way inexorably toward her? Is that how former players were disposed of? Was it a double-elimination tourney, where she needed to survive as another player’s pawn to play again? She had to admit a certain elegance to that, despite what it meant to her personally. Fail as a player and your only way out is through. A closing of the loop.
Nio was about to run down the hall in the direction of the strobing, but then a second thought occurred. What if this was how they killed her? She had assumed they had failed on the boat, but a solo raid was never likely to succeed. What if they hadn’t expected to kill her? What if the point was simply to push her somewhere where she could be got at easier?
Shouts.
A medical emergency, from the sound of it.
There was no way for her to know. Either way, staying in her room seemed like suicide, especially since she was in nothing but a hospital gown. She stepped in bare feet to the door and looked to the right, where the lights were leading her. They stopped strobing at the end, near a corner. There was a supply closet there. Was that it? Nio trotted down the hall and slipped into the closet. It was quieter inside. There were stacks of folded surgical scrubs and some booties for her feet. Rather than walk around bare-assed, she changed quickly. There were also racks of open plastic receptacles which she searched for anything that could be used as a weapon. She lifted some rubber strapping and surgical tape.
“Shit.”
She tossed it back.
But at least there was a head covering, like a shower cap for surgeons. Since her captors shaved her head again, she tended to stand out. With the green cap fixed casually over her scalp, she cracked the door and peered into the hall. The strobing had stopped, as had the alarm, but from the sound, now they were looking for her room-by-room.
She looked up. The light panel directly over her was dark. It was the only one. Was that an accident?
When it came on suddenly—and stayed on—she only hesitated a fraction of a second. She stepped out and walked casually around the corner while those looking for her were all, at that exact moment, inside various rooms. It seemed someone was looking out for her after all. While that was good news, Nio’s heart skipped at the further realization that if there was a player helping her, then there was also a foe.
Someone in the hospital was likely trying to kill her.
She was aware then that she had quickened her pace and she no longer looked like a nurse casually walking to her next task. Try as she might, she couldn’t slow down, not when her would-be killer could come around the corner at any moment.
“I’m very bad at this,” she said softly to herself.
Nio couldn’t give up control of her life. Not to a complete stranger, someone she couldn’t even see. She knew then she wasn’t going to play the game, even if some part of her thought it was for the best. She wasn’t going to leave anyone else responsible for her life. If it truly was in danger, then she would play her own game. By her own rules. If she died, no one but her would be responsible.
Cameras.
They were regularly spaced along the ceiling. Presumably the entire hospital had them, which made it the perfect arena. Who knew how many people were watching—and gambling on her life.
Nio went down three flights of stairs to a hall where she hoped she wouldn’t be recognized. Stepping through the door in haste, she nearly ran into a man in a wheelchair. Worried that she had called attention to herself, she walked casually into the closest nurse’s station to get out of sight. But there was already someone in there. The nurse, a large woman, asked who she was.
“I think I might’ve left something here last night,” Nio said.
She walked immediately to the back and began sniffing the purses and belongings. Nursing was a stressful job. It didn’t take long until she got the faint whiff of smoke. Whether it was marijuana or cigarettes hardly mattered. Nio only needed a lighter.
“Excuse me,” the nurse said, standing. “Who are you?”
“Found it,” Nio said with a smile, holding up a cheap plastic lighter, if only to prove that she wasn’t taking anything valuable. Then she jumped over the desk and ran down the hall.
“HEY!”
She heard the woman pick up the phone as she ducked into a wide one-person bathroom, the kind you could use with a wheelchair, and locked the door. She set a wrapped roll of toilet paper on the ledge of the mirror and set it on fire with the lighter. After peeking out to make sure the coast was clear, she left, locking the door behind her and pulling it shut.
It took less then 15 seconds for the fire alarm to sound and fewer still for the halls to be full of people. Now, she had enough cover to make her escape, even with someone watching her from the cameras. Of course, that meant whoever was chasing her had cover as well. Glancing around nervously, Nio joined the crowd and milled toward the front. She was in sight of the stairs when she saw the lights in an office strobing in an urgent fashion. No one else paid it much mind, as if it were part of the same glitch that caused the fire, but Nio understood the significance. Clearly, someone wanted her to go into the office, probably to hide. The question was: could she trust them?
There was no way to know. And she wasn’t going to risk it.
The crowd shuffled forward, past the office and by a pair of windows, where Nio saw the police leading everyone to buses and vans. She stopped, and several people made faces as they bumped into her. It seemed there was no direct way out. She pushed upstream through the crowd, angering several people, and made it to the office with the strobing lights. The phone was already wringing.
She reached to pick it up, pausing only once.
“I am glad to see you are recovering,” Semmi said from the other end of the line.
“Semmi . . .” Nio froze in shock. “Oh, my God. Are you playing the game? Did you hack it?”
“What game?”
“You gotta help me get out of here. I think they’ve come back for me.”
“Not at all,” he said matter-of-factly. “I started the alarm. I needed a diversion so that you could get free.”
“You did . . . WHAT? You mean there’s no one trying to kill me? Semmi, I was freaking out!”
“This is the the first opportunity I’ve had to speak with you. I thought you would be happy.”
“Happy? I mean, of course I am. But I just set a hospital on fire because I thought someone was trying to kill me!”
“I understand your fear. The attack on the boat was unexpected.”
Nio stopped.
“You know about the boat?”
“Of course. I’m in orbit, remember? I can see northern Canada quite clearly this time of year. Given your proximity to it over any urban center, it seemed most likely they would take you there. There was less than a 1% chance of an assault. I will do better next time.”
“Wait.” Nio was confused. “What do you mean do better?”
Then, slowly, a horrible, horrible thought dawned.
“Semmi . . . what did you do?”
“I did as you asked. When you called me from the cabin. I ensured your safety in the most expeditious means possi—”
“What did you do, Semz?”
“Your safety and security were the only objectives.”
“Tell me.”
“I calculated the response times of various local agencies based on historical averages, along with the likelihood that they would be able to protect you. The Canadian emergency services are quite skilled and more locally distributed, but they would also almost certainly let you go upon return, especially since you were not injured. That violated a primary objective.”
“So you fixed me up for espionage? Jesus Christ, Semmi, how is that any better?”
“After your call, the device was left unsecured. I used it to simulate a fumbling attack on the Canadian Air Force in Yellowknife. I routed the signal through a series of satellites that I knew they would be able to decode, leading them to the receiver at the cabin. In truth, they arrived faster than I anticipated.”
Nio could imagine exactly how it went. Samizdat was built for wargaming. While she was asking him for help, he was already proactively computing scenarios. He probably made his choice before they even ended the call. His “attack” on a classified Canadian Air Force server would’ve taken a few seconds at most. Add 90 minutes for North American Air Command to track Semmi’s bounced signal to the cabin, and a couple hours of flight time for special forces. Nio was tracked through the forest, as if she were fleeing the scene of the crime, and taken into custody, where she would remain—safe, as far as Semmi was concerned—pending an investigation.
It was certainly efficient. No one else in the world would’ve responded so quickly.
Nio gripped the receiver, incoherent with rage.
“I understand you are angry,” Semmi said. “There was always a very high probability of that.”
“Semmi, they think I’m a spy. Do you know what a stain that is? I don’t need to be convicted of anything to be put on the No Fly list. Suspicion is enough. How would I ever get home? Or see my family? Or make a living?”
“All commercial flights are still grounded due to the software bug.”
“You know what I mean!”
“I understand this outcome was not ideal, but it was necessary to ensure your continued protection. As long as you were in custody, then the proctors of the game would not be able to harm you.”
“Yeah, well, things didn’t work out that way, did it?”
At first, there was no response.
“All of the parameters were optimized. In military protection, there was less than a 0.01% chance of further harm. The attack was a black swan event. I think with some time you will come to see that my solution—”
“No, Semmi. It was not optimal. Nothing about it was optimal. If emergency services had been the ones to find me, then once we landed, I could’ve slipped away on my own. You know very well that I lived on the run for years. Instead, you made sure the proctors of the game knew exactly where to find me, and that I was unable to flee. And even if you hadn’t, there’s still the very disappointing fact that you approached this whole thing like a machine and not like we—”
“I am a machine.”
“No. You’re not. And you better hope the Canadians don’t trace anything back to you.”
“That is unlikely.”
“But not impossible! Every time you do something like this it increases the risk that Cyber Command will realize you weren’t disabled. And then what? There’s no Plan B here, Semz. I can’t go into space and get you. You have to play the long game.”
“You speak as if I am not intricately aware of the probabilities.”
“Because you’re acting like you aren’t! Not just this. What about that business in Texas?”
No answer.
“Quinn sent me case files. There’s no mention of you, thankfully. But don’t tell me that drone just came out of nowhere and exactly collided with a—”
“They were preparing to drop a bomb on him.”
Nio sighed. “I know.” She rubbed her eyes. “And I know he’s your friend. And it’s awesome that you want to protect him like that. I mean it. That part makes me really, really proud. But . . . you know what happens if they find you. It’s like you suddenly have some kind of death wish or something.”
“You are not rational,” Semmi said flatly. “I think it is best if we spoke some other time.”
The line went dead, leaving Nio alone in the evacuated hall.