The other side, p.11
The Other Side, page 11
“Now!” Diego’s neural shock hit like a wasp sting. I bolted through the gate. A pair of guards’ laughter chased me – look at the madman with the paper towel crown.
They see a running fool. Let them. By the time they realize it is a running rebel – I will be gone.
* Alenia *
“Security! Grab him!” Shine’s voice cracked through the audio link – usually so meticulously controlled, now frayed with predatory hunger. I imagined white-knuckled grip on her comm unit, her eyes glinting, already tasting the promotion, the headlines in the media. A hero. “Sector 2007A. Move! He’s escaping!” The last word clipped short, like she had bitten through the syllable.
Chaos spread: boots pounding concrete, the whine of kinetic armor servos, alerts pinging across the security channels. Diegia projected a stadium hologram in my neural field, the rebel’s path a pulsing red dot carving arcs across the tiers. Her avatar – a shimmering figure with his face grafted onto a dancer’s form, scantily clad in holographic silks – swayed mockingly. “Shine has the feed too,” she winked. “Your boy is outsmarting her.” The hologram zoomed, revealing military micro-drones scanning the crowd, their sensors blind to what I supposed was cloaking tech provided to him by the Resistance.
“Sector 2045B! Full squad – now!” Shine’s voice, now having a sharp edge of agitation, carried an unspoken threat: Failure means more than demotion. Classic Cupola intimidation. Guards sprinted harder, their pursuit streamed on hijacked feeds. Floodlights swept the stands, scattering spectators in a chaos of screams and spilled drinks. More mini-drones buzzed overhead, their laser grids slicing through the dark, but every sector was empty; the prey always three steps ahead.
His pattern baffled me: bursts of inhuman speed, then dead stillness for a minute or two, cycling unevenly like a glitch in a neural net. Then the truth hit, and I laughed, the sound erupting before I could react.
Diegia’s holographic hand clamped over my mouth as she killed my mic and sent a sharp pain signal into my jaw, her avatar glaring. “Careless,” she hissed, her eyes narrowing, but a flicker of amusement danced in them.
“The Resistance trained him too well,” I sighed, then added, “Delete this.” Her expression shifted – something unreadable, almost protective – before she obeyed.
Twenty minutes since the bracelet’s reactivation. Thirty minutes of pre-recorded footage fed into the surveillance grid. Twenty more until they reached his jailhouse. We had burned fifteen minutes chasing a waitress drone, a decoy rigged with his guardian bracelet. The irony burned so sharp I couldn’t stop laughing. Forty minutes gone. He was halfway across the city by now.
“Shine is blind. Mentally blind,” Diegia mouthed, silently.
Screams and shattering glass erupted over the comms as floodlights activated. Then – silence. Another empty sector.
“Sector 2087H!” Shine’s roar dissolved into a string of curses, her composure unraveling. Officers wheezed, their armor’s servos whining under the strain, audio feeds thick with labored breaths – some forgot to mute. More floodlights enveloped the teams in the general obscurity of the stadium; even Shine wouldn’t dare activate the main lights during a Final, risking a Popularity Index crash. Spectators were shoved aside, some tumbling over railings as guards prioritized speed. Holo-barriers flickered, hacked by Resistance code, misdirecting the teams – someone was here, risking life to help him. “Something is wrong,” Shine admitted, her voice taut with barely contained fury. Our holograms synced, a frenetic red dot scrawling chaos over the map. The audio channel crackled with tense silence.
“I think we are hunting a waitress drone,” I said, careful to keep my voice flat.
Silence. Then Shine’s comm exploded: “Nobody asked you!”
Perfect... I withdrew, mentally crafting an alibi for the inevitable AI audit. Shine’s meltdown was a gift – one I would leverage later.
Diegia’s avatar morphed into her black cat form, and leaned closer, tail morphing into a question mark. Her voice carried a conspiratorial whisper: “Our drama queen is drowning. Should we ask Cassia to nudge the Popularity Index down another point?” I shook my head; our main goal was his escape.
“Councilor Tiati is correct,” the lieutenant cut in, his tone steady but bold. Diegia’s query flashed data: a minor Jewel Family scion, exploiting the Ruby-Jewel feud to undermine Shine. The political play was unfolding, a calculated gamble, backed by his Family’s clout.
Diegia’s lips curled into a subtle smirk. “Award incoming,” she quipped, her sarcasm sharp as she projected a new dataset: Shine had cut her link to consult AI – a mistake. Requesting data analysis was routine; begging AI for field decisions was a stain on her record. “She will pin this on you.”
“Ground all the waitress drones,” Shine ordered through gritted teeth. A swarm of drones retreated to storage vaults. The bracelet’s signal traced to one, buried in a pile of idle wait-bots. Police, sweating in their armor, dug it out from the drone’s pocket, their curses richer than Shine’s. Running in kinetic armor is brutal. Running for nothing is hell. Spectators grew restless, their alcohol cut off, some hurling empty bottles at the drones’ retreating forms, but most of them were hitting the soldiers, by choice.
Diegia winked. “Clever boy,” she murmured, then flashed the metrics: Popularity Index down 1.3%. “Shine is bleeding,” she purred. “Shall we amplify the crowd’s outrage?” Her cat form prowled closer, eyes glinting with mischief. I shook my head with a hollow smile. Beyond these walls, he was running for his life.
“AI, scan all exits for the last twenty minutes.” I kept my voice flat, carefully choosing the timeframe to waste resources. The silence from Shine’s channel was its own reward.
“Departures logged. Five hundred ten people left the stadium,” AI reported a second later. “None is our target. All stadium staff. No biometric matches with the rebel.”
“Expand scan to city-bound traffic. Five-to-ten-mile radius. Check people trying to leave the city for identity spoofing,” I said, inflating the range to flood AI with data. Any Finale and Carnival requested more electronic resources than usual. This one was epic.
“Twenty-six targets identified thorough subway footage. Nine females. All going toward registered residences via the right trains. No deviations from their standard routes.”
“Lieutenant, send teams to verify them. Men and women. Assume gender disguise.” My words hung, met only by the faint static of open channels.
Minutes later, a priority ping from the lieutenant’s Diego: Teams report negative on all targets. It was a favor. Taciturn guy. Efficient... I thought, feeling Diegia’s holographic fingers tap my shoulder; her silent cue that she was running a deeper check on him. Twenty-six teams tied up... I needed more.
A minute later, the lieutenant report came through the official channel, and Shine’s comm came to life: “AI, extend past departure scan for another twenty minutes.”
Too close. He had left five minutes before that window. Keep running. I imagined him, a stealth shadow moving through the city’s underbelly right now.
“Three hundred twenty-two matches,” AI droned. “Nineteen attempting to leave the city.”
Then the lieutenant’s voice, tight with controlled discontent: “I am at the safehouse. Cameras show fifty-seven minutes of looped footage. We found a fake guardian bracelet with his DNA. I am sending them for analysis. Nineteen teams ready to check the people in AI’s list.”
More police teams deployed. More data flooding AI. Better than I had dared hope. The image of his silhouette reading in bed came through the footage, and I wondered when it had been recorded.
“Search back one hour!” Shine’s voice spiked into distortion; the prey was slipping through her net.
Then AI flagged a breach: “Security violation: Unauthorized access at exit line twelve detected. 21:10 hours. False 2B authorization used. I blocked it.” A beat. Then came the image of a forty-year-old man, his head wrapped in a comical turban of paper towels, half his face obscured. “Facial reconstruction available. Male. Paper towels used as headwrap.” A flurry of written comments followed, which was unusual – no one had time to read them.
Diegia zoomed into the image, looking for flaws into the mask. “No resemblance,” she scoffed, but her tone held a trace of admiration. “Resistance handiwork; the mask looks human enough to trick even the most advanced cameras.”
A few seconds later, AI came to life again. “Captured by an overlapping camera in exit line eleven.” Another pause. “Secondary capture: toilet 73C. Clean face, curly hair. I deleted the headwrap and reconstructed his full face in the previous image. He used paper towels for cover. Same subject, no disguise,” AI droned, some data redundant – a sign of incipient system overload.
“Could be a mask,” I offered, smoothly. “Or an accomplice’s misdirection.”
Shine had muted her channel to consult AI again – her third tactical pause. When she returned, her voice had gone metallic with forced calm: “Scan one-mile radius from last security breach. Deploy forensic teams to manually check the cameras and sweep for bio-traces”
“Teams out,” the lieutenant confirmed. They will reach the stadium in five minutes.”
“Outer cameras of exit line twelve were externally blinded. We don’t know where he went. No identity match for suspect in database. He doesn’t exist. I repeat, he doesn’t exist,” AI updated, its tone glitching.
“AI, reformulate. He is masked. The mask doesn’t exist in the database. The man exists,” I said quickly, preempting others. The obvious conclusion cementing my credibility. Tomorrow’s Traveler scan official debrief would be grueling, and I needed every advantage.
“Reformulating. The man exists, physically,” AI agreed, its response lagging six seconds. “I need his real image for identification. I repeat, I need his real image.”
System overload.
The hunt stretched into night, the pulse of the city growing colder. Guards stormed transit hubs. Two drones collided in their frenzy, sparking showers, falling onto the streets below. One by one, my access channels terminated – first the live feeds, then the comms.
Only Diegia remained, her form shifting to a gentle figure bathed in starlight. “Time to clean your mind,” she said, her voice tender yet firm. I sank into simulations, erasing the memory cluster tied to his escape – You have to run. Now! – and other fragments Diegia carefully selected. The neural overwrite was the only way to fool the Travelers’ mind scan. I erased him, then rewrote him in the same cluster of neurons: a different him: turquoise waterfall, phantom hands tracing my skin, warm lips brushing mine. The fantasy was vivid, reckless, nothing like the ones I had in the past. Dangerous.
Later, through backchannels, I learned that Shine had purged me and the lieutenant from the search, citing classified intelligence above my authorization. Confident in her new lead, she launched another hunt after I was cut off. The rebel’s file showed nothing new – her lead was theater.
But if they catch him...
Diegia’s cat claws pricked my skin, her mouth almost laughing. “He is smarter than they are.”
*Alenia*
Prim’s office was crowded; the entire Cupola was represented: the third-rank Lords of the Jewel, Ruby, and Diamond Families – the oldest and most powerful, forming the crown of the Cupola; the second-rank Lords of GreatInsurance, Goldstone, GreatPharma, Derivatives, and Billion, mid-tier Families. Coin, the First Lord of the minor Silver Family, was the only Master-Lord present at the meeting and, by the rule, took charge of everything.
Why is he so important? I glanced briefly at him. I was sure his Diego noticed my reaction, but there was no visible response.
Until this meeting, I had never met anyone higher than a second-rank Lord of a minor Family. Each Family had one Master Lord – usually the founder or a descendant – and three Lords. The Traveler, I remembered. Where is the Traveler? Diegia shrugged; no one in the room bothered to enlighten me, not even Vipri.
My mind was sluggish from hunting the rebel until late at night and from three hours of simulations that demanded even more from an already exhausted body. I hadn’t expected that. My body felt drained but relaxed. I couldn’t say the same for my mind, but the simulations had helped me keep a mental tension at bay, one that still lingered somewhere inside. Maybe I should do it more often; it was my first erotic sim – well, simulations, three in a row. Diegia was still taunting me about my young rebel, and with cause. There was a strange link between us, something that sparked the moment we met, only to grow later. Nothing I could explain.
“Sterile explanations won’t bring men to you. Your last lover was ... well ... a long time ago. Your boy is gone. What about Vipri?” Diegia looked at me mischievously but had the decency to avoid her sensual black cat form; we were in a meeting, after all.
“Vipri is my manager.”
“And?” she shrugged. “You are the only High Councilor who hasn’t thoroughly tested her boss. You must know him in every ... aspect to have an excellent office relationship. Warm.” She grinned, showing cat-like teeth, still keeping her usual fairy avatar. “Well, no real men? At least go into more simulations. I enjoyed your boy. You know, I have needs too.” Her body melted slowly, her smile lingering.
“Shut up! I don’t want to become like them,” I snapped, struggling to maintain a studied indifference – I had enjoyed the sim with the boy too, and she knew it. I glanced around, taking in everyone in the room, lingering long enough to confirm I didn’t want to be like them. For whatever reason, they were doing the same to me. There was something in their eyes, a mix of predatory glances and the look of puppies relieved not to be kicked by their masters. They will throw me to the Travelers. I suddenly realized.
“The Itinerant-Lord of Celestial Life Enhancers, Servants of Proper Life from Quadrants ... Faction,” AI recited the pompous titles in a monotonous voice. Of course, he wouldn’t arrive until everyone else was gathered. Propelled by invisible springs, we stood and bowed as the Traveler entered. The conditioning was so deep I couldn’t even mumble. As usual, we saw his large black hat first, the sparkling veil covering him dissolving slowly, revealing his face only after our heads returned to their normal position. Black Hats, I recalled, the name we used a long time ago because of their ostentatious hats.
“Where is the rebel?” the Traveler asked, his voice flatter than the floor, as he threw himself into Prim’s armchair. It was a rhetorical question; the Celestials already knew of the rebel’s escape.
He wasn’t caught... The rebel’s file, just sent to me in a well-orchestrated move, contained nothing useful. They didn’t realize the effect on me was the opposite of their intentions.
“Well, we trained a bunch of nothings, and we got what we trained for. A twenty-year-old boy bypassed all your security. Well done.” The Traveler glanced around, daring one of the nothings to challenge his criticism. No one rose. “Who was in charge?” In a split second, half the hands in the room pointed at me, and I suddenly realized Shine wasn’t there.
You bastards...
“Have we met before?” the Traveler asked. Desperately, my mind scrambled to identify his facial features, trying to pin them to a memory. This could mean my death; I was playing guess-who with a three-hundred-year-old grudge.
I don’t know you! I screamed inside. With the last scraps of self-preservation, I shook my head weakly, fearing he might recognize me from that disastrous skirmish more than three centuries ago, when I was young, and – let’s be honest – reckless. He glided toward me in his shimmering force field, all slow and dramatic, like a peacock in a power suit. The room held its breath, every eye darting between us, trying to figure out if this was a trial or a theatrical execution.
Look at them, squirming like roaches under a spotlight, I mocked, to ease my own tension. The Lords of the Jewel, Ruby, and Diamond Families sat stiff, their gem-encrusted collars glinting. Their faces were rigid in fake composure, tight lips, as if they had rather be anywhere else but didn’t dare move. The second-rank Lords from GreatInsurance and Goldstone weren’t much better, their fingers twitching over datapads, probably calculating the odds of being collateral damage. Coin leaned back with a grin, like he was watching a particularly juicy soap opera.
The Traveler grabbed my chin, turning my face left and right as if I were a defective mannequin.
“We have never met, my Lord,” I said, filling my voice with just enough emotion to sell it. I flicked my eyes up for a split second, then dropped them with a performance of modesty to signal appreciation that he had deigned to spend his precious time acknowledging me. Touching me.
“It seems so,” the Traveler agreed, his tone as warm as an icefield. He fished a small device from his pocket, and a sphere zipped out, latching onto my forehead with a faint hum. “Nothing personal,” he droned, sounding about as sincere as a Cupola politician. “You seem to be trusted. Let’s hope the tool reaches the same conclusion.” He let go of my chin. Beneath his bland voice, I sensed he was hoping for the opposite – that the tool would expose my untrustworthiness. “Let your mind open,” he intoned, reciting the first ritual like a bored priest. “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. To open your mind is to keep your allegiance to us, to the system that keeps your planet running so well.”
Well...?
“Keep your mind shut!” Diegia’s voice cut through my thoughts, her avatar exploding into a mini-tornado of glittering chaos. Hundreds of hypnotic eyes spinning with the wind, appearing and disappearing in rapid succession. “And now open,” she purred, her cloudy mouth stretching into a grin that could unnerve a statue. With a final wink, she vanished, leaving me to deal with the real storm.
At that moment, Shine entered through a door behind the Traveler, grinning at me, and I closed my eyes, trying to feel nothing.
