Neon Grave

Chapter 9 Caster 1/2

"Azareans are tone-deaf. They need humans in their PR just to read a room properly, non-tactically."

"A job made all the more difficult when somebody funds an entire ad campaign condemning them. The media tells one side of the story. Just one: 'Union Big-wigs want to monopolize Synether.' I think the last headline had a typo."

"Sounds like a classic smear campaign. Some very disgruntled humans are involved."

"You don't have to be disgruntled to be an exploiter."

Jess gulped down her glass. "You have a name in mind?"

"No, but we must be theorizing the same thing,"

"If somebody bankrolls an ad campaign, there should be a paper trail; right?"

She nodded to the beat of arcade music.

"The trail leads back to New Switzerland and goes cold from there."

"What about the companies and people involved in the ads?"

"They used shell devices. We identified an ASIC, which is—"

"Amnesiac Software Input Computer," she said with him. "FYI: A sneaky firmware update can process and recycle the data before it's deleted. It'll eat up the battery, sure, but it'll work long enough to help you track things."

"It's all encrypted, Jess," he said soberly.

Jess rotated on her stool and faced the counter. "You got your hands on a shell?"

"People who've run the ads on Azarean smear campaigns, their calls and messages, people rigged with pulmonary and neural circuitry, they're encrypted like we've never seen before. They have no memory of who they were. Imagine your whole life deleted, replaced with fake memories... or nothing at all. "

Setting her cup down, she bitterly breathed, "Another reason to avoid implants..."

"Pardon?"

"So, what does this have to do with dead children?"

"Excelsior was a test," Case sighed. "The Azareans were so desperate for peace, they put desegregation on the table. If their own offspring would share academic classes with human children, maybe it'd restore some faith. Establish a clear line of dialogue, at least, right?"

"Now that's gone to hell, which is no coincidence; is it?"

"Goliath's name drop, the smear campaign, the attack on Excelsior Academy, I think one organization is behind it all."

"Which brings me to my last question." Jessica faced Case directly.

It was only for a second, but Case made eye contact then turned away. "That image you sent me, with the dead pixels," he hesitated, "your hunch was right; it's not random."

"Who is behind it?"

"That image was the harbinger to a cross-axis blackout event and a few library data farm infiltrations. Same MO: drop in, interrupt node connectivity, exfiltrate. Unfortunately, we don't know how they got into those high-security compounds."

"What was inside the libraries?"

"Archived ROMS. There'd have to be people on the inside, but even if their memories were erased, there's nothing to indicate that there were boots on the ground. At first, CECT wanted to credit the Lynx with these breaches. Made sense, but too obvious. For a while, Sub Terra was a prime suspect. But, my contacts tell me that Sub Terra's intelligence network has deteriorated. Plus, not their MO."

"Uhuh. I can practically vouch for that."

"People in the counter-terrorism community link the MO to a black hat whose clientele includes several high-value Fixers from the old world: Gang lords, generals, stealth corpos.