Aki the Trigger

About a week before the Montim Aquinor Leadership Summit, Lia and her—I wasn’t sure. Her friend? Mentor? Aunt? Anyway, Lia and the woman called Valeria Vitus arrived in Hong Kong. We met at the 22-hour cyber café, which Valeria found visibly disagreeable. It made me dislike her more; she seemed like the stuck-up kind of Aquinor member. Lia noticed my injury and asked if I was able to continue with the plan.

‘Wouldn’t miss it,’ I assented, with a toothless smile.

Lia talked me through the plan. My role amounted to less than expected. I didn’t even need a weapon. Lia and Valeria would enter from the front, go upstairs, and let me inside from a certain window. While they went downstairs, I waited for a signal, after which I needed to trigger an alarm, thus causing the attendees to evacuate.

‘Then we wait for the crowds to thin, follow Horace through his escape route, and take him out?’ I ventured.

‘Aurelia and I will handle it,’ Valeria said. ‘You will leave after the alarm is triggered.’

‘Respectfully,’ I started, ‘shouldn’t I help with the deed?’

‘We will handle it,’ Valeria reiterated, in a tone neither I nor Mako liked.

Mako and I had swapped our usual expressions. I stayed neutral, aloof, while Mako scowled. She flicked her Cat-Claws in and out, etching notches into empty soda cans. ‘How will you “handle” it,’ Mako asked.

‘Not your concern.’

Again, not a tone we liked. But Lia calmed me. She asked for us to trust her, though she left “her” ambiguous. Trust Lia, or Valeria? Whatever. Kill Horace, get information on the Rat King.

It’s on, I thought.

On the night that would later be dubbed “The Apparition Crisis” by drama-loving syndicate members, our group of four—five, if you counted Proteus—made our way to the compound.

Lia and Valeria drove a rental sedan, while Mako and I followed in a convertible jaguar. ‘Remind me,’ Mako said. ‘Why are we, the Sumiaka-kai members, driving to an Aquinor event in the least inconspicuous vehicle within a five-mile radius?’

I chewed my lip and feigned deafness. I’d rented the jaguar when we first arrived in Hong Kong – because it looked cool.

‘Is this “hiding in plain sight” as people say?’ Proteus asked. Every day I got more annoyed at having an AI sharing my brain.

Problems arose fast. Way faster than they should’ve, like fate had things to do, people to see, and to keep schedule it needed to screw us over sooner.

The first problem arose as we drove to the compound. A security checkpoint stopped all vehicles far from the building’s perimeter. A squadron of guards led the vehicles to a designated parking zone, while another squadron checked identities of guests – and disarmed them. I began to sweat. If things went wrong in the compound, we’d have to run down the hill to our vehicles, which were also guarded.

A few guests got turned away, some from Aquinor, some not. That gave me an idea. Risks were increasing. The plan threatened to devolve with these new variables. My role didn’t need backup. Didn’t need Mako.

In truth, I’d felt uncomfortable about having Mako around since learning she had a daughter. Not because she was a mother, but because there wasn’t a reason for Mako to follow me into danger; I’d already promised to help with her daughter’s school thing. The first time I thought this was when fighting the Fox, only a short while ago. What if the Fox had gotten lucky and cut Mako’s throat? She’d have bled out on the floor and either me or a representative from the Sumiaka-kai would have needed to track down her daughter and relay the news.

I followed the guards, parked the jaguar, and stepped out. The second squadron checked my identification. Venator. Easy. They waved me through. Mako made to follow, but obviously they found her identification insufficient. ‘I’m with him,’ she said, struggling against a guard. ‘The Venator in the Brignac suit.’

I looked over my shoulder. The guards asked if she spoke the truth. ‘She’s a hitchhiker,’ I said. ‘Never seen her before tonight.’

Mako ground her teeth, an unfamiliar, indignant fire to her eyes. ‘You don’t understand a damn thing.’

Mako, normally a straightforward talker, fit a lot of meaning into that sentence.

#

I walked up to the compound, blending into the crowd, keeping half-a-dozen steps behind Lia and Valeria. The guards had let me through as a Venator, but it wasn’t wise to cross the main entrance's threshold. Venator or not, the Aquinor members inside would soon question why a member from the Sumiaka-kai stood in their midst.

Per the plan, I crept away, circled the building, and waited at the designated window. Despite my expensive Brignac tuxedo, sleek and newly-bought, I felt naked without a weapon. The guards had confiscated my pistol. And collapsible shotgun. And retractable sabre. The guards had provided a physical, numbered ticket stub to recover the weapons later. I rubbed the ticket between my thumb and forefinger, as if to summon a genie. My three wishes? For my three weapons to be returned to me.

An hour elapsed. What’s taking them so long? I thought. Flipping cyber-side tempted me, but it wasn’t clear what systems the compound had. Last time I was there, the defences didn’t seem sophisticated, but they likely sharpened them for the Summit. Besides, getting distracted during a mission didn’t suit me aesthetically.

Finally, the door swung outward and a rope dropped down. I scaled the wall and climbed inside. Lia crouched behind a vase in the hallway and beckoned me over. ‘You look nice, by the way,’ I said, noticing her red gown.

‘Not the time, Aki.’ She glanced at me, at her gown, at the walls and down the halls. She never kept her gaze fixed when nervous. Always flitting around. ‘But thanks. Nice tuxedo. Not sure I’ve ever seen you in a bowtie. Where’s Serizawa?’

She wasn't actually asking; nerves loosened her tongue. ‘This is going fine,’ I assured. ‘And it will continue to go fine.’

‘I know.’ It didn’t sound like it. ‘Horace is making his speech soon. Signal goes off, you do your thing and—you know the rest.’ She handed me a two-way easy-clicker. Simple operation. Two lights. Press to transmit; upper light goes on. Press to acknowledge; bottom light goes on.

‘That reminds me, any preference on how should I trigger the alarm?’ I asked. 

‘Use your best judgement.’

‘Right,’ I replied. ‘Right…’

Lia left to oversee her part of the plan. I holed up in a room, checking for the signal every ten seconds. There was a narrow window with mesh over the interior. It gave me a view of the stage, which Horace climbed onto for his speech.

I flipped cyber-side, checked for defences, and scanned Horace from afar. I knew how he looked, given his status in Aquinor, but his cyber-side presence rattled me. On the surface, normal. Hidden among his cybernetics, not normal. So fucking far from normal. I’d never detected anything close to similar. Some kind of super tough ICE, defences crisper and more secure than world governments, like the vantablack ICE of defensive software.

Felt like I stood at a cliff and couldn’t see the bottom. No, felt like standing at the edge of a murky lake, and just below the surface hid something ancient, something primordial, a great big maw waiting to snap its jaws shut and consume any living thing that strayed inside without wondering what it ate. Why would it bother wondering? It could eat anything.

‘This is wrong,’ Proteus said, with a note of fear. ‘DMS.’

‘Say again.’

‘DMS. Dead Man’s Switch.’

My heartbeat quickened. ‘Can you detect the output?’

A Dead Man’s Switch wasn’t illegal or uncommon. A lot of executives had them, so when they died, all sorts of output responses occurred: Scheduling for their wills to be read, stock transfers, spiteful last messages to ex-lovers, file deletion, furnaces turning on to incinerate stacks of documents—that kind of thing. Proteus should’ve, and could’ve, been able to detect most of the output responses, but when it came to Horace…

‘I am unable to detect anything,’ Proteus said, the notes of fear growing stronger.

‘Maybe he doesn’t have an output. Might’ve been preparing but—’

‘He is a sandwich,’ Proteus interjected.

Uh, what?

‘There is an output response by the Dead Man’s Switch, but I cannot detect the result. His ICE has captured and restrained a virus. Imagine a mosquito between microscope slides. I recognise it; the virus originated from the Rat King. Powerful. If the one you call Horace perishes, the ICE will deactivate, and the virus will be freed.’

‘Shit,’ I said. My cybernetic defences were nowhere near as sophisticated as Horace’s. ‘Will it find a new target?’

‘Not precisely.’ Proteus hummed, as if straining for processing power. ‘The Dead Man’s Switch will trigger…something. This “something” relates to the virus. I do not know how.’

‘If we’re lucky, it’ll neutralise the virus,’ I chuckled. Yet, as I said this, it felt like a horseshoe had been nailed upside down to my ass and all the luck was falling out.

The signal light went off. I pressed my button to acknowledge. Go time, I thought, flipping real-side. Use your best judgement. Turned out my best judgement was mediocre. I grabbed the vase in the hallway and smashed it through a window. Not imaginative, but a compound-wide alarm went off.

I drifted back to the main room and heard the disorder. Proteus informed me of cameras recording my actions. It didn’t bother me. So long as I didn’t display aggression toward Aquinor, I could make up a lie, like I’d broken up with my girlfriend and gotten angry, or I was going through a teenager’s rebellious phase. Didn’t matter much, since the death of Horace, the underboss, would steal the attention of every power-hungry syndicate member.

People started filing toward evacuation points. I watched. Things appeared to be going well, but Lia and Valeria were shouting through my earpiece. Their voices blurred into one: Splitting up. Change of plan. Cut him off. Room secured. What’re you doing? Put this on. We can’t do this here. Here or never. Some of these aren’t Aquinor.

‘Go to them,’ Proteus demanded, showing me the quickest route, which involved kicking open a door and literally punching through a fragile, decayed part of a wall. It led me to an outdated control room, with a view overlooking a small, windowless room below. My knuckles bled. I panted and rushed to see what happened below. The small room’s doors had been sealed and a coral-toned gas filled the room. Two-dozen people stood in the spreading gas.

‘K-Type nerve gas,’ Proteus said, awed in the sense of awful, that sort of amazed but horrified. I shared his feelings. No wonder Valeria hadn’t told us their plan to deal with Horace. It involved a substance some of the most immoral people in the world refused to use.

And yet, like a cockroach, Horace survived among the dying crowd. Three figures stood: Lia, Valeria, and Horace. Lia stole a handgun from a dying guard and fired at Horace.

‘Stop her!’ Proteus shouted. I shouted, too, but nobody below heard me. I couldn’t break the glass; the gas had filled the room.

‘Lia!’ I yelled, knocking on the glass as hard as I dared.

A minute passed. I flipped cyber-side. Signals came from Horace, manifesting as geometric shapes unfolding. Implicitly, I knew what happened. Horace had been killed. The Rat King’s virus had been freed. And, in the same moment, the Dead Man’s Switch activated. Reality decayed with a blinding whiteness.