Subversive Elements (Unreal Universe Book 2) Read online

  But that was for later.

  The first order of business was finding out what the fuck was going on in the basement. From the overlay images grabbed from The Museum’s ‘LINKs and the prote-ripper program, Garth knew that there were a pile of people doing who knew what in the underground loading bays, an area he planned on avoiding at all costs. The crew there undoubtedly belonged to the terrorists upstairs and he wasn’t going to involve himself with them unless absolutely necessary.

  Right that moment, the other group bothered him more. Since their communications network was encrypted to hell and back, it was obvious they weren’t working with the first set. The first group was using low-tech means to coordinate their efforts, as neat a solution to prying eyes and ears as anything Garth’d come across on the high tech world of Hospitalis.

  Hospitalis being as big and as weird and as old as it was, it was pretty likely that Group 2 was comprised of people not overly friendly towards Group 1. Since terrorists had a tendency to run in the same circles, the best guess as to the presence of a two-for combo of crazed radicals was that Group 2 wasn’t super happy about someone else taking over The Museum.

  Garth didn’t care one way or the other what Group 2’s plans were. Since they hadn’t reacted at all to the bloodshed that’d already happened, they weren’t friendly and that as all he needed to know. Since they were being really helpful by clustering together in one small area of the mazelike basement, they were going to be dealt with first.

  Unfortunately, getting down to the basement meant sneaking past the hall monitors covering the exits between sections. Although they weren’t using their protes to speak to one another, they were all on a first name basis with one another. Pretending he was Terrorist Harry Bosch from the Peach Pit Squadron out for a stroll through The Museum just wasn’t going to work.

  They’d shoot first and not even bother to ask questions. It’s what he’d do. Well, actually, what he’d do, had done –if he was lead dog- was just blow the place up from the start and do all his grandstanding from some other place, preferably on another planet. Showboating left room for errors.

  Their reliance on runners posed an intriguing problem. Since the dominant faction wasn’t using protes to coordinate their movements, they weren’t showing up on The Museum network servers like the second group. More distressing, the tech guys had a great deal of control over Museum systems. What he really wanted to do was jack into The Museum’s camera feeds, but that was in the cards; even with Odin masking his presence on those cameras, sooner or later one of the tech guys would notice his presence. If he went out of his way to make his presence on the ‘LINKs known, it would be game over. That left only one solution.

  That meant dealing with the runners.

  Very healthy, very fast and unfortunately very quiet message bearers who were tearing up and down the hallways every few minutes

  Only his augmented hearing and sheer Spidey sense driven paranoia kept Garth from wandering into one of the tall, thin bastards as they warped their down the hallways.

  As much as he hated the thought of being pleased by any actions of the lead terrorist, Vilmos had made his life much easier from the moment he’d had shot those reporters. With the people in the stands getting close to a riot, things weren’t subsiding fast enough for Gualf’s liking, demanding that he follow through with his threats; at least two more hostages had been shot. With Naoko’s play-by-play, Garth learned that Gualf was demanding more support from around The Museum.

  Assured of their total control over, guards covering empty floors hurried to the central room, leaving a skeleton crew behind.

  Naoko’s words stuttered, faltered and eventually subsided into woeful tears as the fresh crew assisted in killing the worst of the recalcitrant hostages.

  “Hang in there, my love.” Garth subvocalized as he slipped behind a sentry too busy looking the other way, waiting impatiently for a runner’s update on what was going down in the Viewing Room. “You’re doing fine.” Inwardly, his heart ached that Naoko should have to see this kind of thing.

  He crept patiently down the stairs, waiting for a challenging shout to change the tempo of his day. There were no cries as he made his way down. Garth took the stairs three at a time until he made it to the storage levels, eager to reduce his chances of capture by the few remaining guard to zero. With the main extremist faction maintaining strict control upstairs –not to mention dominating the subterranean access chambers-, there was no need for secrecy. According to the data, the second group of dissidents hadn’t moved from the small room they’d occupied since the beginning.

  Orienting himself properly, Garth opened up the floodgates and hustled through the basement, thankful he’d memorized the layout.

  Crap that the gazillion-year old curator couldn’t bear to part with filled most of the available space along the corridors, making the journey of someone unfamiliar with the route a long one indeed. Curiosity revealed that every chamber was also overwhelmed with piles and piles of neglected history growing from floor to roof.

  Standing there, taking a breather and listening to Naoko’s resumed report, Garth watched a tower of ‘Hero’ mannequins shift under its own weight. Fake body parts spilled everywhere. He chuckled.

  In the Viewing Room, the methodical killing of captive museum visitors was finally slowing down to a trickle. True to Gualf’s dire promise, three random people died for every ‘hero’. Barely into the day’s proceedings, and the extremists had themselves a body count of no less than thirty innocents.

  The toll was miniscule to what waited. Garth knew that. Gualf’s willingness to kill thirty men and women so early in the game screamed his absolute cold-zero attitude. More than that, it wrote the man’s endgame in bright red blood; no one was getting out of The Museum alive.

  Who in their right minds wanted a dictator? Who willingly rescinded their right to natural-born freedoms and responsibilities? The terrorists’ ’demands’ made no sense to Garth; he’d run across more than his fair share of dictatorships and regimes during his time in Special Services, and the only people who ever wanted that style of government were the ones at the top of the heap. It was insane.

  Hell, it was a miracle that the Latelian Regime had lasted five thousand years in a relatively unchanged form. Someone traveling forward in time would probably be able to settle down in under five minutes.

  A glance at his prote told Garth Group Two still hadn’t moved from their roost. Garth wondered what in the hell were they waiting for. Puzzled, the ex-SpecSer picked through Odin in search of answers. The powerful prote answered his questions a few seconds later; one of them was busy trying to hack his way through the firewalls surrounding the co-opted Museum ‘LINKs before moving in. From the repeated efforts –and failures- on both Museum netLINK servers and proteii throughout The Museum, it was obvious that no one in Group 2 knew what they were doing. It was going so badly, in fact, that the hacker wasn’t even getting past the basic protection avatars.

  It’d be a hundred years before any of the techs operating The Museum’s netLINK core noticed that someone was trying to bust in. Even if they did notice, they’d assume it was some bored eight year old and dismiss it altogether.

  That was bothersome as well; Group 2 was in possession of the finest point-to-point encryption software he personally had come across and yet they weren’t capable of navigating their way through what should have essentially been –for professionals- a point-and-click hack session? It was just so … weird.

  Garth went over to the pile of dismembered mannequins and grabbed a couple heads. He chose two of the more realistic examples and chuckled again.

  Maybe it wasn’t fair, but really, he didn’t give a damn.

  People were fucking with his date, so he was going to fuck with them.

  Chairwoman Doans’ Past Bites her in the ass

  Chairwoman Doans watched the news report pensively, eyes glowing white hot with fury. A few pushes of a button brought her a live video
feed from the relay stations nearest The Museum. Sure enough, there were already a dozen reporters trying to get through the front gates. The manifesto, pointing to no specific group or making any demands, was simply a reiteration of essentially everything every ‘organization’ used as their launching point for rebellion.

  Distressingly, it was playing on a special daytime broadcast of Lately Tonight every fifteen minutes, and with each repetition, more bottom feeders were going to make their way to The Museum.

  It was highly likely that eventually one of the camera crews would have the necessary equipment to get through those gates and the entire system would have coverage of the hostage crisis. Unacceptable.

  Alyssa absentmindedly torpedoed the terrorist broadcast with her prote, flashing the usual ‘Banned by the Regime’ logo and warning message across every netLINK playing the video.

  By itself, the footage wasn’t enough to warrant a Sigma and enough people would automatically delete the feed from their home ‘LINKS after seeing the logo and that would be the end of it until or unless some fool started up again. Then she’d probably just send the Watergate Men out to fix the problem. No, Sigmas were becoming too unwieldy.

  A voice filled the air. “Chairwoman Doans, Director of Local Protection is on the line for you.”

  Alyssa took the call without looking at the DLP’s harried face. She knew what he wanted. “Get your men down there, Director. Keep those reporters from getting inside. I don’t want anyone trapped in that ring should the defense gates come down. You saw that foolishness they aired?”

  “I have. Nasty.”

  “Indeed it is.” Alyssa switched to another vantage point. An account from the Ministry of Examination’s new overt operation squad announced that each of the reporters were being scanned, logged and incarcerated for later interrogation concerning the shocking hostage taking. There was simply no telling who was involved, not at this stage. Anyone of those so-called reporters could be trying to get their way back to ‘family’.

  “What are your plans?”

  “In regards to?” Alyssa tapped a button and the image pulled back to vantage point high above the square.

  The streets were still mostly empty, but that wouldn’t last for much longer; once the highlights from the early afternoon bouts were over, they’d fill to capacity with overexcited Gameheads spilling out from the dozen or so other venues in the area catering to The Game. When that happened, the adrenalin-soaked fools would make their collective way over to The Museum park grounds, curious to see how things were shaping up. From there, the situation would snowball as everyone and their grandchild tuned in to watch the news.

  “The … the terrorists, si.” The Director stammered, obviously shocked that he would need to remind the Chairwoman.

  “There are no plans at this time to negotiate with the terrorists.” Alyssa answered gruffly. “Can you handle the assignment as I’ve given it, or shall I send in the God soldiers now?”

  “No, Chairwoman, that won’t be necessary.” The Director’s waxy face disappeared.

  Chairwoman Doans settled back into her chair. After a few seconds of deep thought, she sent off a request for everything her Ministers had on Vilmos Gualf. A few seconds later, she asked someone to locate Garth Nickels; a dread suspicion in the middle of her gut warned that, if he weren’t already neck deep, he soon would be. That man wandered into trouble like a child wandered around a candy shop.

  On the monitors, a small envoy of bright blue police vehicles came careening into The Museum’s park area, neatly intersecting a new core of reporters trying to ‘get the story’. Several aircars swarmed up and over The Museum. Theoretically done to prevent any vehicles from escaping that way, the maneuver was actually designed to provide Doans and the Ministries involved with the hostage situation a bird’s eye view of the Viewing Room by pointing their cameras through the thick glass Dome. A surprisingly thoughtful maneuver on the DLP’s part.

  Another voice sounded through the air, causing Alyssa to smile a bit. “Chairwoman Doans, I’ve been apprised of the situation and am ready to deploy.”

  “That won’t be necessary for the moment, OverCommander.” Alyssa ‘LINKed her feeds through to Vasily so he could watch through her personal systems.

  “Si?” Vasily frowned, his thick eyebrows crawling up his forehead like hungry caterpillars. “I confess, I do not understand.”

  Rather than answer right away, Alyssa played the statement issued by a reporter with the unfortunate luck of being on the inside, isolating one of the voices. “This man claims to be Vilmos Gualf. If it is him, this protest is most likely not all that it seems. He used to work for the old Chairman as an agitator. He was … good.”

  “Gualf…” Vasily harrumphed. “Didn’t he help your campaign when you were OverSec?”

  “He did.” Alyssa shrugged. There was no point in denying it. “Any port in a storm, and as I say, he’s very good at what he does. When Scottsdale officially lost the Chair, Gualf vanished. He managed to stay hidden, and was announced dead quite some time ago.” Staying dead and buried for decades was in itself a marvelous act of will.

  “Nothing new in that.” Vasily suggested dryly. In the high-stakes world of Latelian politics, it was practically unheard for people such as Gualf to survive the transition, no matter that he’d been instrumental in assisting the new Regime leader to power.

  “True.” A sharp sound drew both leaders’ attention to the monitors. One of the police officers had struck a reporter in the head with a stun baton. “But I worked closely with the man. Gualf is … is an idealist of a very peculiar sort. He helped with the Scottsdale incident because the man lacked ‘iron and fire’. If it is him, I imagine this whole situation has arisen because of the Sigma Protocol issuance and my ’dealings’ with Trinity.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “Gualf saw me as the perfect tyrant. It’s why he helped me in the first place, why he left Scottsdale out in the cold. He saw me as strong enough to do what needed doing and unafraid to keep people in the dark. Whereas Scottsdale just ran roughshod over the entire system. You see?”

  “And now that Trinity’s … presence … in this system has come to light, he wants what, exactly? To get rid of you?”

  Alyssa smiled at Vasily’s ignorance of political motivation. “On the contrary, OverCommander. He wants to force my hand, to ruin what he sees as collusion with the enemy. If it is him, inevitably he is seeking to be crushed. If I refuse to send in the troops, he no doubt believes it will be a signal to the people that I’m an unfit leader and there will follow a glorious uprising in true chaotic fashion. Don’t forget, The Museum is a hostage as well. People won’t stand for the destruction of such a monument. I will be judged and executed for crimes against the Latelian people and –according to his demented mind- an even better Chair will come along, one that won’t allow any ‘deals’ with Trinity.”

  Vasily nodded, understanding now. “And if you do send in the troops, you’re proving him right. You will become his fictitious Tyrant. Either way, he gets something of what he wants. Very smart, this Gualf.”

  “Ambitious, perhaps, passionate, too, but intelligent?” Alyssa laughed scornfully. “An intelligent man would realize that a true tyrant doesn’t care one way or the other what the people think. I don’t need the approval of the million ministries or bureaus under my command. I do it as a courtesy to their positions and out of necessity. No, if I showed him the true depth of my power, if I told him the smallest percent of what I’m doing, I could end this charade in a minute. But I won’t. The people are restless. They need to witness our terrorists coming to a final, bloody end. It may silence them for a time. If this is Gualf, I’ll let him stew in that pressure cooker for a bit before I officially respond.”

  “At your command, Chairwoman.” Vasily saluted old Regime style, arms crossed against his chest, eliciting a round of laughter from Alyssa. “Contact me when you need my soldiers, si. In the meantime, I
have reports that require my attention.”

  “Until then.” Chairwoman Doans allowed herself a small, soft smile of pleasure aimed at Vasily just as his face vanished from the monitors. She thumbed the comm system. “Someone find Barnes for me. He’s not responding to my calls.”

  The God Squad Meets Harry Bosch

  Tommy Dinkins nearly shat himself when the first head burst through the door to land at his feet, eyes staring accusatorily up at him, mouth open wide. When the second one flew in right after the first and whacked him in his own head, he lost control and opened fire.

  The other members of the God Squad danced out of the way. Dianaca shouted loudly for Tommy to stop, pointing wildly with her own rifle at the head he’d just filled with bullets.

  “There’s no blood, Tommy!” She hollered. She raised her weapon and pointed it at Tommy, reluctant but willing to shoot the idiot if he didn’t stop firing his gun in the enclosed space. “There’s no blood!”

  “But the … the …the heads.” Tommy said weakly, pointing at the demolished head with his gun. “The heads.” He knew the image of those faded yellow eyes staring up at him would haunt him for the rest of his days. “The … the fucking heads.”

  One of the younger members started laughing. It really was funny. For the first couple of seconds, everyone had been close to pissing their pants, first at the heads coming through the door, and then the way Tommy’d tried to blow them through the floor and into Hell. The nervous tension turned the laughter hysterical for a solid minute, with everyone in the room clutching at one another, giggling and snorting so heavily that quite a few of them started crying.

  Tommy -wiping tears from his eyes- cocked his head to one side, remembering something pretty goddamn important about the whole head state of affairs. He looked at Dianaca, and then at the others. “If we’re all in here, and they’re all upstairs shooting people, who threw those damned heads?”