He hadn’t realised. Not properly, not yet. Neil is dead. The information had come from his eyes and ears, travelled to perhaps the surface of his brain. But it hadn’t sunk in. It was the small limbo between touching something hot and pulling your hand away. The pain hadn’t been computed yet. At some point, some day, it would.
Dom had no idea what would happen on that day.
Kry was swarming with people in uniform. Sasha, Esme and Vince were somewhere, with a dozen other cops milling around along with a few military boys. Alexander Manning had been carted off to hospital a while ago, the corpses however, were processed with less urgency.
They’d brought Neil out in a black zipped-up bag. Dom and the twins had followed the stretcher out as he was wheeled away. Then they stood just outside the entrance as he was carried out of view. Dom was still outside now, his watch counting pretend time said it was 4:23 am, but the ‘sky’ felt more like noon. People filtered in and out of the nightclub, with stern faces and awkward gait. An occasional flash of light filled the darkness, some from official police photographers, but most from the growing army of press arguing with the walls of officers either side of the street.
An eruption of flashes came from behind him, and he didn’t bother to look at what had stirred them up, until a voice called to him from their direction.
“Dominic.”
He turned, and saw President Cast approaching him.
“Madame President.” They had met a few times before, but only in the early days. It had been years since they’d spoken face to face. He was quite surprised she even remembered his name.
“I have to board a shuttle for Earth in a few minutes, but I wanted a summary before I left. From you.” She said, her face flat and unemotional.
Dom’s eyes strained against the storm of flashes breaking behind her. The border dispute between the frenzied press and the police was teetering on violence.
“Let’s step inside.” Dom said, gesturing to the entrance.
As they walked, people stood aside and adopted formality as they noticed who she was. Dom felt a ghost of anxiety, as if he should feel nervous about talking to somebody so important. But the worry was lost in the limbo, diluted in the pre-pain.
Just inside the entrance a small table had been set up, there were a few evidence bags and some tablets strewn across it. She tapped a screen and a photo of one of the victims at the scene appeared.
“Three casualties were found at the scene.” Dom began. “Two have been pronounced dead, the other was rushed to hospital and is currently stable.” The president turned away from the table and met his eyes. “Two officers arrived before backup converged, Alexander Manning was one of them. They were seemingly attacked soon after arrival… one died but Manning was only injured, the hospital believes he will survive.”
“I hear the other officer was a friend of yours.” She said, her face holding a stern sadness which was incredibly well rehearsed if it wasn’t genuine. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you ma''am.”
She looked past him to the animated crime scene of the dancefloor behind him. Her jaw was clenched and she seemed on the verge of breaking composure.
“So she’s killed 12 people in less than 24 hours…” She said.
“14.” Dom grumbled. Her eyes snapped back to his. “There were two Kodes gang members who were killed in a vacuum pick-up. It probably wasn’t her personally but almost certainly on her orders.”
“Fuck.” She whispered in a quick syllable. She turned back to the table and swiped the tablet. Another photo of the crime scene was revealed. Then another. She kept swiping until one stopped her, she flinched and her hand shot backwards from the screen. The photo was of one of the victims, a youngish red haired woman. She had a small red birthmark below her left eye that resembled a teardrop.
Right. Dom thought. Kry was frequented by politicians, she might be staring at a dead friend. He studied her face, and her composure was on an even thinner knife’s edge.
“I’m sorry ma’am, were you familiar?”
“I only met her today.” She muttered in a weak voice. Her gaze was soft but unblinking, staring down at the photo.
She swallowed. Then turned back to Dom, professionalism washed over her body from the face down and the returned authority sparked some tension within him.
“I want her dead or captured within the week, do you understand?”
“Yes ma’am.”
She reached deep into a pocket and brought out a blank handheld. “You have every privilege.” She said as she handed it to him. He looked down at the blank rectangle and locked eyes with himself in the glass, a short connecting wire jutted from the main port. He understood what privileges meant.
“Thank you ma’am.” Was all he said, but he was speaking to the back of her head. As she walked away, he reached down and turned off the tablet. The corpse dissolved to black, but an illusory afterimage lingered for a split second against the void. He pocketed the new handheld and brought out his own. He sent a summons to the station to the whole team, figuring they may as well get started now. Nobody was going back to sleep after this.
He had started to leave when something rumbled on the table next to him. Still sealed in the evidence bag, Neil’s phone buzzed with the summons he had just sent out. Dom stared for a few seconds, then spun around and hurried out of Kry, trying to avoid thinking about how much that hurt.
* *
The four of them got back to the station at around the same time. Dom was standing in the middle of the room, swaying on his feet as he tried to find the right words to usher in some productivity. Vince was staring into space, Sasha took to hiding her mouth behind clasped hands. Esme was glaring angrily at Neil’s empty desk. All four were completely silent.
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“I was approached by-” Dom started.
“Fuck!” Esme screamed as she shot up from her desk. In the same movement she grabbed something glass from her table and hurled it against the wall. It shot through the air in a perfect straight line. The weak gravity not having enough time to drag its path into an arc. It shattered into a hundred flecks of debris against the concrete - spreading in a roughly star shaped pattern.
She stormed from her desk to the door, her sister was up just behind her. She caught up to her and pulled her back by the shoulder, then placed herself between Esme and the door.
“Hey. Hey. Look at me, look at me, look at me! Just breathe okay, breathe.”
The rest of the consolation was too quiet for Dom to make out. He watched as the final shards of glass came to rest on the carpet, as the station again fell to silence, except for Sasha’s whispers and Esme’s muffled sobs. He sympathised, of course, but couldn’t stop himself wincing. Catharsis was in many ways inevitable, the human body and mind wasn’t built to maintain high emotion for a sustained period of time. It was just that every time he gave into catharsis himself, it felt like losing.
“This is a break of routine.” Vince said softly, Dom raised his head. “This attack is different from the others.”
“How so?”
“There’s no upload.” Dom had missed that. And the significance of the absence only grew as he thought about it more.
“What else?” Dom asked.
“I spoke to the same tech guys that were at Kodes HQ, this time all of their security footage was wiped, nothing for us to find… Also, before the wipe, their system was hacked by two separate devices.”
There was the thread to pull on, the lapse in routine. If only Neil was here.
“Okay.” Dom said. “Neil would have tried to access their system the moment he arrived. I reckon the answers to this little mystery are on his handheld, or maybe just more questions.” Dom reached into his pocket and produced the blank handheld the president had given him. He turned around to look at the twins. Esme had her head down on her sister’s shoulder, but Sasha was paying attention.
Dom spoke to the room. “The president gave me this. It’s some backdoor shit that can give us access to any handheld. It seems like the way forward to me. It’s just - does anyone object, morally…”
Sasha pulled herself free from Esme and walked towards her desk, she pulled out a drawer and produced the evidence bag with Neil’s handheld. At least someone had the presence of mind to bring it back to the station. Dom thought.
“Neil wouldn’t have hesitated.” She said, unsealing the bag and handing the contents to Dom. He walked to his own desk and Sasha and Vince followed. He plugged the short wire into the main port of Neil’s, connecting the two devices. After a few seconds both screens lit up to a dark grey, then small loading graphics spun in sync across the two displays. It looked promising for a few more seconds, then the spinning icons stuttered and vanished. The backdoor’s screen went dark, then text appeared on Neil’s. Dom couldn’t help but smile.
The text read: ‘Greetings big brother! If you’re in the market for a backdoor exploit that actually works, I’d be happy to help. Actually wait, no I wouldn’t. You can all go fuck yourselves :)’
“Of course.” Sasha said, in a voice of love dosed in joy and sadness.
In much smaller text near the bottom, Neil had written: ‘On the off-chance someone has a legitimate reason for this attempted breach. Please enter my mother’s name:’ followed by a blinking underscore. When Dom tapped it, a keyboard appeared.
“Please enter my mother’s name?” Vince said. “That shouldn’t be hard to find.” He hurried over to his computer and started working at his keyboard.
“No.” Esme said, catching everyone off guard. She wiped her eyes and started walking over to the others. “Remember? His mother was some cyber-criminal who got in trouble with the government. He told us how she died in prison.” She reached the desk and started tapping something onto the keyboard. “He doesn’t want her actual name, he wants her alias.”
Esme entered: ‘Morningstar’ and hit enter. After a fraction of a second the text disappeared and they were met with Neil’s desktop.
“Nice one Es.” Sasha said.
Dom remembered now, at the conclusion of a particularly lengthy campaign of drinks: Neil, the twins and himself had got chatting. Neil had shared the story of his mother, and her crusade against an illegitimate government which eventually claimed her freedom - then her life. Neil adored his mother, and was always one to protect his own privacy. For them to know ‘Morningstar’, he must have trusted and respected them above all else. It was a revelation that should have brought happiness - but it only made Dom feel worse.
On his desktop, several programmes were still running. Dom started flicking through them and eventually landed on something interesting. Neil’s feats of programming were already quite incomprehensible to Dom at the best of times, but through the blur of syntax he thought he could make out the essentials. It looked like Neil had found another device trying to connect to Kry’s network and had then initiated a hack on said network in order to get a location for the other device.
“Wait.” Sasha said, snatching the handheld away and unplugging it from the backdoor. She brought it over to her computer and started working. Furiously tapping at her own keyboard while darting her gaze between her own monitor and the mess of data from Neil’s programme. Her sister soon joined her and leant over her shoulder at her work.
“Oh Neil, you are brilliant.” She said, “He got a location.” Dom and Vince stood up in sync as Sasha spun her monitor around at them.
“He set up all of these programmes to run automatically, so they worked to find them even after he-” Sasha choked on her words. “Anyway, he found their device on Kry’s network then used that to grab a location on the two uploads… but it’s coming up as some barren spot out in vacuum.”
“That’s where the privileges come in.” Dom said, tossing the backdoor handheld over to the twins. “I think it also has classified military intel.” Esme caught it and plugged it into Sasha’s machine, then spun the monitor back around.
“Yeah it does.” Sasha said, “There’s loads of jargon and security though, give me a couple minutes.”
The minutes stretched and Sasha kept the whole room in suspense. Her sister got increasingly impatient, her grip on Sasha’s shoulder getting tighter and tighter as the silence passed by. Sasha didn’t waver though, she would not present anything until she was ready - everyone would have to wait.
“Okay.” She finally said, “I think I’ve got it… that spot of nothing out in the dust is actually an old Chinese base, allegedly abandoned after the November Escalation.”
“Anyone else want to test that theory?” Esme said, pushing away from the desk and swiping up her things from her own desk.
“Affirmed. Let’s move.” Dom said, as he and the twins started for the door.
“Woah, woah hang on.” Vince started, “Just the four of us storming the castle? Shouldn’t we call this in?” Dom stared blankly back at him, “We should at least wait until Mr. Manning is out of the hospital, right?”
The twins were already out the door, unbothered by Vince’s protests.
“Look, you can call in all the backup you want, but I’m not giving her another second to scurry out of reach, understand?” Dom said.
“Aren’t you-” His face flushed with a brief but powerful anger. “Nevermind… You’re the boss anyway.” He rose from his desk and shuffled out of the room with his head low and jaw clenched.
Dom followed him out the door. President Cast wants her captured and she’ll get her today, he thought. No one else is dying.