Chapter 19 #2
“Don’t you mean secret lair?” Jason said.
They were standing on a walkway high in a room as big as a school gym, with walls, floor, and ceiling of concrete.
The only visible entrance, apart from the dozen massive pipes running in and out of the walls, was a hatch far up in the ceiling, which was inaccessible since the folding ladder that should have hung from it had been removed.
The inward-bound pipes converged into a single tube that ended over a vast trash hopper.
As Jason watched, a cylinder like the one he’d arrived in hissed through the pipe and into place above the hopper.
Its bottom was unplugged and removed by machinery, and a stream of garbage fell into the hopper.
Replugged, the cylinder was sucked back up the pipe and diverted along a different branching path and out one of the exit pipes, off to collect more garbage.
MorDread grinned hugely. “Yes! Secret lair! This is our home away from home. Not even Norman has been able to find where we go. There are many ways to get here, and who puts cameras in garbage dump? Garbage is never noticed. No one wants to notice it. But it goes everywhere. It is intestines of city! And since WasteNet is low-tier network, hacking it is like stroll in park. Ah, here comes Huntsman.”
Jason’s cylinder disappeared with a hollow hiss, and its place was taken by an identical one. Its hatch opened and Huntsman hoisted himself out, giving Jason a grin very like MorDread’s. “He is still alive, I see,” he said to MorDread. “I wasn’t sure you would bother diverting him.”
“See, Ghost, we divert you to troubleshooting rail,” MorDread said.
“Otherwise you go in bin to be sorted.” Jason followed his pointing arm.
Below the hopper, a system of conveyer belts and mechanical dividers sorted trash into three exit streams. “Organic, recyclables, and general waste. Before, people had to sort trash themselves, and who wants to do that? Now system is so smart it can do it for them, by image recognition. It is one of greatest accomplishments in AI, and no one hears about it because it is garbage!” He laughed heartily.
“You, you are organic matter, so you would go there.” He pointed to a long, wide conveyer belt, walled with plexiglass, leading to a round tank with a conical top that took up a third of the cavernous space. “To be digested.”
“Digested?” He must be bluffing.
“Yes!” MorDread said. “Anaerobic digester! Works just like your stomach. Smells like it too! Turns garbage into methane. Fart gas! Very valuable. Digester can break down small pig in one day. You, maybe thirty-two hours.”
“Don’t worry, you’d be dead from no oxygen very much sooner,” Huntsman said.
“But that is not why you are here.” MorDread led the way down the steps to the floor in quick hops. Jason followed, and Huntsman fell in step behind him, much too close for Jason’s comfort. MorDread led them around the side of the digester. “This is why you are here.”
Jason’s steps faltered. Grouped around a cluster of computer equipment were a dozen men, each almost as big as Huntsman, with defined muscles and five-o’clock shadows.
They looked like they’d be more at home in greasy uniforms behind the controls of a tank than bent over computers.
Or maybe he just got that impression because of the guns slung from their shoulders.
Stacked beside the computer equipment was an assortment of military equipment: night-vision goggles, scout drones, guns, ammunition clips, even what looked like rocket launchers.
MorDread had come well prepared to steal the System.
Huntsman went over to where one of the men was gripping the shoulder of the little girl Jason had come for.
She looked unhurt, but her eyes were dull and unfocused in a way that made him uncomfortable.
She didn’t resist when Huntsman grabbed her other shoulder and the two men maneuvered her forward. “This is trade, yes?” Huntsman said.
“Yes,” Jason said. He looked at MorDread. “Let her go and I’ll tell you where the System’s core is.”
MorDread smiled knowingly. “First you tell, then I let her go.”
Jason had expected this. So he took the children’s glasses from his pocket and said, “Then you need to allow Kleio to make a call out, so Sprite can verify she’s alive.”
MorDread’s smile became a frown. “Why? You can see she is.”
“Sprite’s the one with the address. I purposefully didn’t memorize it.
I put it in an encrypted file and gave it to her.
She has the file; I have the password. You need both our approvals to get the info.
” Bluffing was essential to social engineering, but Jason couldn’t do it with his usual breeziness.
His breath was so shallow he had trouble finishing each sentence.
MorDread’s knowing smile returned, and he said, “I think I see.”
Jason stepped toward Kleio, but Huntsman pulled the girl back. This had the effect of twisting her shoulders, since the second man hadn’t moved. The girl’s eyes shifted, but she didn’t flinch.
Jason realized with a sudden flash of anger why Kleio’s expression made him uneasy.
When Mia had been in a bad situation she couldn’t escape—when a foster mom was thrashing her for some perceived slight or a foster dad was on meth and ragingly paranoid—her eyes had taken on the same unfocused look, her face the same blankness.
Huntsman nodded at the glasses in Jason’s hand and said something in Russian to MorDread.
“Nonsense,” MorDread said. “I’m sure Ghost, of all people, is not working with System!
He has already shown he would rather die than do that!
” He gave another hearty laugh. Jason was beginning to hate that laugh.
“However, we will not use your glasses,” he told Jason.
“We will use one of my backups.” He went to a workbench in the corner and rooted through a pile of equipment.
“Why?” Jason said, a little too quickly. “Mine are ready to go.”
“Yours would not be able to talk out,” MorDread said, selecting a pair of glasses, holding them up with a frown, and rejecting them.
“There are eight meters of concrete and dirt between us and world,” he said over his shoulder.
“Another reason we chose this place! So your outbound call must go through my node, through cable I tapped.” He nodded at a terminal on the workbench.
“So we use my glasses.” He held up a smaller pair, gave a satisfied grunt, and turned.
“Which are also geo-spoofed, so our fairy friend cannot trace this location.”
Jason’s heart sank, but he had no choice but to take the glasses MorDread held out. He walked slowly to Kleio and knelt. “Hey there,” he said gently. “My friend wants you to wear these. Can you do that?”
She didn’t look at him or say anything, but she gave a small nod.
Jason slid the glasses onto her head. They were too big, and she had to reach up to hold them steady.
Her face screwed in discomfort as he twisted the attached smartbuds into her ears, but then she was able to drop her hands because the smartbuds held the glasses in place.
Jason held down the power button on the side of the glasses until he saw a glimmer in their depths.
From his corner, MorDread turned his head to watch the terminal, where a log window showed the glasses’ connection info.
“Okay, you can call Sprite now,” Jason told him, and hoped like hell Sprite would have a plan.