“darkness” is a web series based on the novel grydscaen: dark. It follows the characters and the storyline after grydscaen: dark ends. This web series will run for a few weeks and post on the grydscaen blog. copyright (c) 2018 natsuya uesugi.
darkness – episode 1
“Don’t blow smoke up my arse. Out with it! You were the trail. How did darkzero5 get tagged?” Jazz, the Level 9 hacker and an informant for the Psi Faction barked at the tech sitting at the jock rig in the Soul Deep underground garage, the cyber playground for jet jockeys to hack the gridscan in the virtual reality view on an illicit channel. Jazz slapped the table. The tech didn’t answer fast enough.
“Move!” yelled Jazz pulling the red lollipop out of his mouth. The tech burst out of the chair. Jazz deposited himself in front of the rig attacking it as he logged in, his fingers slapping the keys hard. He pulled up the logs and scanned them quickly. “Get darkzero5 over here.”
The tech left the rig and dragged darkzero5 over as Jazz scowled. He stood up leaning over still punching keys angrily then grabbed the bottom of the second monitor as darkzero5 came over.
“You wanted me?” she inquired softly seeing Jazz bristling with anger. Her long multi-coloured hair was braided with ribbons running though, shaved on the right. She had on suspenders, a white t-shirt with paint splotches, black tights, combat boots and a long sleeve red shirt underneath covering her arms. Her hands were covered in black fingerless gloves.
Jazz shoved the monitor to the side jerking it on the metal pole positioned to eye level in front of darkzero5. He pointed at the screen and touched it highlighting a log entry. “You fucking me?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Why are you up in the Psi Faction?”
“No reason. It just came up on my run into the gridscan. You asked me to check the Soul Deep. Look for any references in the dark. Don’t you remember?” she shot back trying to defend herself.
“You don’t seem to be able to keep your lies straight…” Jazz slapped the monitor back and typed out code to bring up darkzero5’s trail for her last run. It came up with a hit. The Zone Police cyber security tagged her fining her 500 credits for an illegal intrusion.
Jazz growled and went silent. He slipped his hand under the handset in the rig and grabbed hold of a gun. He wheeled on her leveling the gun barrel to her temple. “Tell me now or I put a bullet in your brain!” yelled Jazz, eyebrows furrowed, body rigid. He wasn’t about to get screwed by a low level jock on his own turf.
She hesitated not sure of her next move.
“Now!” He cried pushing the barrel to her temple and cocking the gun.
“I was hired by a government agent named Raven Allen from the Psi Faction. I was tasked to sniff you. Find out whose side you were on…” she confessed, her voice high worried about the gun on her.
Jazz held not letting up, sensing her concern and keeping the upper hand. “What else?”
“I was also tasked by Jester to keep an eye on you. He didn’t trust you after you went dark on him after he abducted Zoon.”
“Jester is dead,” exclaimed Jazz.
darkzero5 didn’t answer.
Jazz cocked his head to the side contemplating her silence. “What, you mean Jester survived? He committed suicide. I witnessed the ceremony led by Faid at Jester’s guild…”
She went into her pocket slowly.
“Don’t move!” he barked keeping the gun on her and shoved his hand in her front pocket. He extracted a pin drive.
“Jester wanted you to view this file. Said I needed to give it to you and no one else. Your eyes only.”
Jazz eyed her as he put the pin drive in the slot on the jock rig and brought up the file. He removed the gun from her temple as a video started to play. A stranger in goggles and an anti-radiation mask appeared on screen face obscured.
“If you are watching this you caught darkzero5 spying on the Soul Deep. This was intentional to get your attention. I know you would catch her in your nightly reconcile. I tasked her to check out Raven, the Psi Faction cyber operative and to warn you. The Psi Faction is onto you. I know you are an informant for them. You are playing both sides to your advantage to keep your immunity. You can’t trust Raven. I warn you. The clandestine operative Lino Dejarre, be careful of him as well.”
The video burst into white noise and then the person appeared with a radiation mask and an optical sensor over his right eye, the feed taking over the channel streaming live. The person was wearing a short coat with cuffs and epaulets, vest and black top hat with red rose at his lapel.
“Jazz, good to see you,” came the person smiling, eye bright, genuinely glad to see him.
Jazz raised an eyebrow skeptical as the live feed kicked in and the picture came in high definition clear. “Who is this?”
“I am surprised you don’t recognize my voice.”
Jazz listened to the stranger talk as he removed the radiation mask revealing an unfamiliar face.
“You can’t be Jester. Jester is dead,” exclaimed Jazz shaking the gun.
“And that is exactly what I want the Zone Police to think.”
Jazz took a step back and looked over at darkzero5 who just smiled. “No way…”
“Check the packets, the IP. Verify the feed if you don’t trust your eyes.”
Jazz punched keys on the keyboard and located the origin of the transmission. He port sniffed the machine. The signal was coming from the Jester hacker guild from the back office. The IP shown clearly. The sniff checked out.
“A trace tells me nothing,” insisted Jazz.
“Still don’t believe me?” The person vanished from the screen. A second later Faid, the leader of the Packrat hackers who Jazz knew well materialized in front of Jazz with the stranger in the Soul Deep standing right in front of him.
Jazz came out from behind the jock rig and leveled the gun on the stranger.
“Believe it,” admitted Faid and pulled a handheld out of his pocket offering it to Jazz. The device had a DNA scanning app loaded.
Jazz shoved the gun down the front of his pants and took the handheld and scanned the stranger. The DNA data came back revealing the stranger was Alouiscious Remy Samuel, Jester, the hacker’s real name. Jazz looked at the government-enabled scan carefully not fully trusting it. He handed the handheld back and went behind the jock rig taking his own handheld and ran the scan again not trusting Faid’s device. He blinked a few times and cached the device in his pocket satisfied.
“Alright Jester, I will bite. Obviously you had facial de-recognition surgery to obscure your features. But you can’t hide your voice or those pink eyes. You got those eyes shined that colour. That is unnatural. Nothing can hide that. You got my attention. What do you need?”
“I got an Elite government mainframe to hack. You want in?” asked Jester.
“What do you say, Faid?” Jazz wanted confirmation still not totally trusting this person who said they were Jester.
“The Packrats are in. We need you to make this happen.”
Jazz hesitated and looked back at darkzero5 who nodded. He turned back to Faid.
“You know you want it,” smiled Faid and gave the familiar Packrat hand signal for hacker, thumb to little finger. He wiggled his hand making sure Jazz got it.
“I’m in,” Jazz smirked after a second of hesitation.
“Let me show you what we need…” agreed Faid and led Jazz back to the jock rig. Faid sat down at the machine, five monitors and multiple keyboards anchored by poles on one of the best trailing jock rigs known in the business. Jazz’ rig could get you just about anything, whatever you wanted, fingers in every government and corporate system on the gridscan and the illicit web. Jazz looking over his shoulder.
****
darkzero5 walked over to Jester and sat down in one of the psi synch devices starting up the gridscan virtual reality view that surrounded the chair. Jester directed her query to the Psi Faction so they could spy on Raven and get a step ahead of the government agents who were tracking Jazz.
****
Faid showed Jazz the code they planned to execute.
“What about Rom?” asked Jazz after a moment seeing Rom over by the back of the Soul Deep helping another jet jockey on a run providing backup on a trailing rig.
“He is in it as well,” remarked Faid and sent to Rom who disengaged from the rig.
“Good. We need Rom’s expertise. He is one of the best jet jockeys I know,” agreed Jazz.
“And I am loyal to you…” chimed in Rom coming over having heard his name, his hair disheveled, hands hidden in the pockets of his long dirty tan trench coat.
“The best Level 9 in the business,” called out Jester from the other side of the room.
“At your service,” smirked Rom as Jazz waved him over and he came and watched on as Faid explained the plan for the infiltration.
“We hit the Elite government mainframe into the City. They won’t know what hit them. The Black Holes are already in the backdoor. They have control over the mainframe. We just need to ask permission from them and get to it,” remarked Faid.
“Got it. You need me in the lead?” asked Rom.
“Of course. I need that thing you do so well.”
“Count me in…” smiled Rom and sat down in the chair of reckoning, the lead psi synch device closest to the trailing rig.
Faid configured Rom on the board. “Just give me a minute and let me get it setup,” said Faid as he set the feed.
“Let me do it. I am a better trail than you,” said Jazz.
Faid agreed and stood up letting Jazz sit down. He started pushing buttons on the front keyboard then put a hand on a keyboard at the left and punched out a string of code setting up the trailing computer to track Rom’s avatar.
“Which avatar you gonna use?” asked Faid.
“I am going to use DeadLife, one of Acolyte’s avatars. I got her all set for righteous. All the bells and whistles. You should already have her configuration on the rig already. I was in there for the hack into the stock market the last time before we executed the stopgap break.
“Got it, let me pull it up. That is a pretty sophisticated config. Spent hours getting her setup,” said Jazz.
“Just let me at it,” Rom chuckled.
Jazz spent ten minutes getting everything set. He turned to Faid. “I thought we were tracking Raven. We can do the mainframe hack later. I need to set the config different for that,” said Jazz.
“Sure,” said Faid.
“Alright, all set. Raven Allen is your target.”
“Kick it,” said Rom and Jazz started up the virtual reality session into the gridscan.
Rom brought his hands up in front of him as the virtual reality sphere encircled the chair. He splayed his fingers on his right hand and the view reset showing a long corridor. Rom’s avatar raced forward and then stopped short at a wall of code.
“They got wave encryption. This is going to be difficult to crack,” said Rom bringing his hands together and clapping then pulling them apart.
“No problem. I’ll get you through that. Give me a minute.” Jazz typed out on the deck and blasted Rom’s avatar through the encryption. They ran up on the Psi Faction a second later.
Rom saw virtual buildings in his view. “I’m in. Let me check Raven’s profile first. If I can get into the employee files I can access the system from there and everything will be mine to touch. Show me Raven Allen, clandestine operative, cyber security, Level 2.”
The system responded and brought up a treasure trove of information on Raven.
To be continued in next episode
