Freedom Incorporated by Peter Tylee (the best ebook reader for android .TXT) 📕

wouldn’t dare,” Jackie sneered, looking down her nose.

“Care to bet on that?” Dan took another pace forward, lining his pistol’s sights up with the centre of Jackie’s forehead. “Fuck the rest of that shit.” He waved at the chair. “Sit down.”

“No,” Jackie barked. She dared not obey his orders. She’d learned that on a management camp. Never yield. Get them used to accepting your orders instead of the other way around.

“Sit your baggy arse in the bloody chair or I’ll blow off your fucking kneecaps.” Dan was shouting and a fleck of saliva escaped from his mouth. He meant it. Here stood a person that was responsible for selling Katherine’s death to PortaNet. And as far as Dan was concerned, she was just as guilty as everyone else involved in the sordid deed.

She could see that he meant it. His resolve was scrawled all over his face. So she reluctantly sat.

“You too,” Dan said, pointing the gun at Michele.

“Where?”

“On the floor,” Dan ordered. “Over here where I can see you. And no sudden moves. Don’t even sneeze or I’ll put a bullet in your brain. Got it?”

They both nodded.

Dan wasn’t yet certain what he planned to do. But he wasn’t going to take them back to Australia under arrest. That wouldn’t achieve anything. Nothing good anyway. Their power extended further than the law could reach. A few pulled strings and they’d be right back where they were, while the arresting officers wallowed in a truckload of shit. Dan flared his nostrils. No, there has to be a better solution. And if it ended with Jackie’s blood, then so be it.

*

The Raven nearly drooled in anticipation when he felt the tingle in his temples and was ecstatic when the vibration spread to his back teeth. He knew it was coming. It was imminent. And the timing couldn’t have been better: Dan Sutherland and Jennifer Cameron were out of the house. So is that police officer they’re working with.

He stood and stretched his legs, trying to work feeling back into his buttocks. He’d been sitting on the hard ground with only a thin cushion to protect him from numbness. By the time he could feel his posterior, the omen was in full swing. Again, it took the form of a gelatinous eye. That was fine with the Raven. He didn’t care if it was an eye, a beetle, or a spiny toadfish as long as he got the sign. He wanted four words, four short words that would enable him to complete the contract.

“I give thee sanction.” The words boomed larger than life and resonated in every bone, muscle and cell in his body. It spoke to the fibre of his soul and recharged him with vigour.

Then, as suddenly as the eye had appeared, it vanished, leaving the Raven to time his swoop to the second. He hungrily looked at the house. Only a faint tinge of light escaped from the heavy curtains, barely enough to plot a course. The moonlight helped, but not much filtered through the soupy clouds. But it didn’t matter. The Raven wasn’t shy of the dark. It was his cloak. It protected him from the prying eyes of whatever lurked in such a devastated suburb.

“David Coucke,” he whispered the name. “Samantha Lee…” The Raven relished saying the names of his victims. “Prepare to meet the Raven.”

*

“That’s strange.” Cookie frowned at the digital television they were using as a monitor.

“What’s that, baby?” Samantha entwined her arms around him, feeling a bit like a discarded toy when he brushed her aside. They’d been waiting nervously for news since the others had left. Sleep was out of the question. They couldn’t possibly rest when so much was riding on the success of the operation. Cookie had been hunching over his computer since they’d left, leaving Samantha to fret alone. She’d hovered from room to room, trying to find something with which to occupy her mind for the infuriating wait.

“He stopped,” Cookie said, making perfect sense in his own mind but doing nothing to enlighten Samantha.

“Huh?” She stared blankly at him. “You’re being cryptic again.”

“The tech-head who’s been chasing me.” Cookie’s was glowering at the screen, trying to determine what his nemesis was doing. He didn’t like it when something unexpected happened. He’d been dodging the administrator’s blows for days and he still had to be careful not to trigger the multitude of traps. But the flurry of activity was gone. On its own, that wasn’t unusual, but the way it had happened was far from normal.

“One second he was here, and the next” - he made a hand movement that was reminiscent of an explosion - “he’s gone.”

“Maybe he needed to sleep,” Samantha reckoned. “He’s been busy if I’m not mistaken. Everyone needs to rest.”

Cookie drummed his overworked but itchy fingers on the table. “No. That’s not it. He didn’t disengage. He just… vanished.” It made him even more nervous about what was happening in San Francisco. “What if something bad happened?”

“What do you mean?” Samantha knew exactly what he meant but didn’t dare breathe the thought.

“Maybe Dan screwed up or something.” Cookie’s imagination readily concocted a multitude of scenarios that would spell doom for their friends.

But Samantha refused to believe it. She needed to maintain her optimism as much as she needed oxygen. “No way. There must be a thousand reasons to explain why he stopped whatever he was doing.”

Cookie looked dubiously at her. “You don’t understand. It was… it was like a forced removal. There isn’t a system administrator on the planet that would’ve done that voluntarily.”

“Yeah, but-”

“And what are the chances of that happening at the very moment Dan, Simon and Jen were entering UniForce headquarters? Surely that’s not a coincidence.” Cookie kept digging around the vicinity of the disappearance, wearily probing the data stream for possible traps. For all he knew, it was the most sophisticated trap yet. But his curiosity was too intense; he simply couldn’t pass the opportunity to glean information about what the UniForce administrator had been working on. Maybe I’ll find passwords, he thought with a feverish lick of his lips. He had to know.

He quickly coded a program for a slingshot that would fling him off the ‘net if he trod in a digital snare and tested it twice before committing himself to the potentially baited cheese.

“What is it?” Samantha sensed his excitement.

“When he vanished he left his notes on the table, metaphorically speaking,” Cookie explained. “It could be a trap, but-”

“I know.” Samantha understood him well. “You have to find out.” She trusted him to take proper precautions and refrained from interrogating him; he hated it when people questioned his logic and procedures. Still, Samantha had to bite her lips to keep silent.

He knew what she was thinking anyway and said impatiently, “Yes, I’ve taken precautions. If I trigger a trap, I’ll be booted off the ‘net.”

“I wasn’t…”

Cookie smiled knowingly at her. “Yes you were.” He downloaded unobtrusive snippets of data until he was confident nothing would ensnare him. Gradually it formed a picture.

He gaped, his jaw slack with shock.

“What?” Samantha held her breath in sympathy.

“Oh my G-god,” Cookie stammered. “Q-quick grab a coat.”

Samantha obeyed immediately out of trust, scared by his unusual behaviour. “What’s going on?”

Cookie was disconnecting from the UniForce network and launching his maintenance programs as fast as he could. He wanted to be out of the house within 30 seconds and if that meant ditching the computer, then that’s what he’d do. But all the evidence… It pained him to imagine losing it - there was no guarantee he’d be able to get it again. He ran out of time before launching the slowest two programs and, desperate, yanked the power cord from the computer and tore the other jumbled cables from their sockets. Deliberately doing that sort of damage felt like a crime, there was no excuse for failing to shut the operating system down gracefully. But dire times… He clutched the computer to his chest and called, “You ready?”

She emerged from the bedroom, two coats under her arm. “For what?”

“We’ve gotta get out of here now,” Cookie replied, trying to recall a safe portal destination. The number… “Hang on.” He half-galloped to the lounge room and retrieved Simon’s mobile number from beside the phone. “It’s the Raven.”

Samantha paled. “What about him?”

“He’s here. Now.” Cookie dialled the only number he could remember on the portal. “He’s watching us.”

“How do you know that?” Samantha demanded.

“They hacked into his head.” Cookie pushed Samantha inside the white circle. “He’s a cyborg, remember? It’s just a computer. You can hack them.” He pressed the engage button and Samantha flashed away. Then Cookie performed a similar service for himself and the house lay empty.

*

There he goes. It had turned out to be Natasha Glinski’s toughest assignment. How did one seduce a cyborg? Someone so mechanical he’d lost all sex drive? She’d done her research. The Raven hadn’t had an impulsive sexual encounter since doctors had integrated a computer with his brain. She distastefully curled her lips at the thought. Natasha dreaded any kind of surgical procedure, let alone one that would merge her with a machine. The Raven simply didn’t give in to his human urges; he had the capacity to switch them off. Amazing. She had to admire his self-control. A bit robotic though. She shrunk from the thought of losing her spontaneity. That’s what makes me human.

She’d been unobtrusively watching him in his stench-pot hidey-hole for the better part of a day. Finding him had proved easy, he’d never even attempted to mask his microchip signature. A mistake, she thought disapprovingly. An amateurish mistake. Natasha used disposable personas and never engaged in assignment-work with her own chip, it was just too dangerous. But then, he’s just a bounty hunter, not a real assassin. She’d purchased the information from PortaNet. Virtually anything was available on the black market for the right price. Marketing companies exploited the information trade all the time, though they were more likely to catalogue trends rather than individual movements. Finding specific information was harder, but thousands of PortaNet employees had access to the corporate database and PortaNet didn’t pay them well enough to immunise the data from bribes. Natasha had her own contact, and used him frequently.

She watched the shadowy figure emerge from the house and started walking, timing her stride to intercept him on the overgrown footpath. The weeds were knee-high, the only evidence of the path being a thinner patch running parallel with the street. The parched, prickly plants rustled under her feet and she hunched over as far as her spine would permit. She wanted to pass as one of the seedy, dishevelled residents. Nobody in the suburb was homeless, though very few technically owned the house they lived in. The exodus from the city had resulted in a surplus of empty housing. So there were no street-bums, only abandoned-building-bums. But Natasha’s thick coat was wretched enough to appease anybody’s expectations for a western-Sydney resident. And she’d taken pains to appear feminine. People never expected a woman to pose a threat. Men were dangerous and women were not - or so most people thought.

A stale, refuse-reeking zephyr rippled over her skin. She’d committed herself now; she couldn’t turn back without risking the Raven’s suspicion. And she had a good idea what he’d do if he became suspicious.

Twenty metres. She wondered how close she should get. How close he’ll let me get…

Ten metres. She thought she could probably take the shot from there, but would feel more confident at five metres and kept walking without deviating from the overgrown path. She imperceptibly picked up the pace of her