Fire of the Dark Triad Read online

  “Kir, close the portal,” he croaked, his voice inaudible in the howling cacophony of the program-produced noise, and then it seemed like he suddenly went deaf and colorblind, met with the silence and monochrome lighting of the hotel room. Nick dashed to the toilet, barely managing to reach it in time, and threw up. His head wouldn’t stop spinning, and he kept retching in painful spasms, bending over the basin gripping its slippery edges for support. Once his sickness subsided he tried to get up, but an even stronger wave of dizziness hit him again, and he blacked out.

  He opened his eyes, but didn’t immediately move, trying to figure out why he was laying on the cold tile of an unfamiliar bathroom. His memory gradually returned, but he had no idea how long he had been out.

  “Kir, how long was I unconscious?” his voice was so hoarse that he hardly recognized it.

  “Three hours sixteen minutes,” said Kir. “Your vitals are still not back to normal, but your current condition isn’t dangerous.”

  Nick slowly hoisted himself up, grabbing onto the adjacent sink, splashed cold water over his face and stumbled back towards the desk, his legs shaking and his throat stinging with leftover vomit. The ground was treacherously heaving up and down under his feet, and he had to move carefully, making slow but steady progress across the room. All of a sudden, the floor and the ceiling swapped locations in several fast sequences. Nick fell backwards, hitting his head on the soft edge of the bed, and heard a distinct giggling. He tried to get up, but another flip threw him onto the floor again.

  “Kir, power off,” he whispered.

  “Access denied. You are not an authorized user,” answered Kir in his usual voice.

  The room made a couple of more orientational changes and then stopped in merciful alignment with gravity.

  Nick lay face down for several seconds, and then, not daring to stand, he began crawling towards the chair. Once he was close, he got to his knees, holding onto a leg of the table, and yanked himself up with an abrupt jerk. His butt barely managed to touch the seat when his vision was sharply replaced by complete darkness. He grabbed the edge of the table once again and peered into the pitch-black void, trying to make something out, and yet, he missed the exact instant when a faint pinkish glow flickered in the far distance. The light teasingly danced in the background, slowly dissolving into blurry letters, until, as if assuming sudden seriousness, it jumped ahead, and the blood-red words “I know what you want” clearly formed in front of Nick’s eyes. They hovered there for a moment and then disappeared in a festive explosion, accompanied by the excited clapping of an invisible audience, while a still image of Elisabeth in 17th-century dress slowly developed in their place.

  The room abruptly came back, and Nick heard a light knock on the door.

  He got up gingerly, firmly holding onto the back of the chair, and coughed, clearing his throat. The knock, however, was just a courtesy heads up because the door opened without his permission, and a stranger confidently walked in. The guy was short and scrawny, a giveaway of his Mirror World origins, and he seemed relatively young, though his bad skin and skewed facial proportions made it hard to guess his exact age. He gave Nick a friendly smile, went straight to the cot and settled down on it in a relaxed cross-legged pose, casually leaning against the wall.

  “Am I right Nick?” There was a distinct lisp in his voice. “It’s a rhetorical question, by the way.”

  Nick still stood very upright, squeezing the top of the chair as if he needed something to prop him up.

  “Please, make yourself comfortable,” said the man, inviting Nick to sit with a hospitable gesture, “we need to talk.”

  Nick rotated his chair to face the bed and lowered himself onto the seat, noticing that his body obeyed with a minor delay. Nothing like that had happened to him before, and he wondered if it was a side effect of Kir being taken over or just the pure emotional shock from the most humiliating experience of his life.

  “We’ll need to communicate,” the guy continued, viewing Nick with light amusement, “so let’s say my name is … Johan. It’s not real, obviously, but I like it better than the pretentious abomination my parents gave me to make up for my physical shortcomings. As you can guess, I know way more than your name. To be precise, I know as much as your implant has in its recordings – in brushstrokes, of course. I didn’t take time to peruse all of your data, but I get the gist.”

  For a moment he watched Nick dispassionately, apparently letting his words sink in.

  “There are a couple of gaps, but I figured out why you deleted that content,” he said finally, his face brightening with a salacious grin. “You obviously took care to dispose of some sex sequences, but only with just that one woman from M-237. It’s fortunate that you didn’t bother to delete the rest – that would’ve been a real pity. Pleasure to watch, I swear to God. Excellent passion quality and kinky to boot. This could bring some serious money on the porn market for sure. Rare material – those Mirror World chicks are way more fun than the cold-blooded fishes here in the Commonwealth. You used the opportunity well, my resourceful traveler. And I must give you credit – I mean, you sure do know how to make them squeal,” he licked his lips and winked at Nick.

  The sense of violation was so sickening that Nick almost moaned. But this was what Nick had wanted; he had come here looking for someone who could do exactly that.

  “Relax, my sex monster, I’m just kidding. It’s not my trade … I had to confirm that you weren’t with the police – which is why I was digging into your data. I had to understand your current plight, too – very romantic, my friend, very romantic. However, even considering the sentimentality of your motivation, you don’t seem like a naïve moron, and I imagine that you were fully aware of what you were getting yourself into by coming to Earth3. By the way, good job with the hustler.”

  “Was she?” Nick hoped that he was in control of his voice.

  “What did you think? Don’t overestimate your charm, darling. Earth3 is the wrong place for that. She is a crook, for sure, but small time, not even a Dark Triad, lucky for you. She normally asks her marks to transfer their money to a fake honeymoon account, and then she vanishes, naturally. Fully respectable business, but the poor thing didn’t know that she was wasting her time with you – you are as broke as a church mouse. But, in all seriousness, you did get lucky. It could have been much worse. You just don’t walk around here without a neuro-transmission shield, buddy.”

  “What’s here on Earth3 for the Dark Triads?”

  “You mean, for us, right, Nick? But, to be fair, it’s mostly for Mirror World folks, not Earth natives like you, Nick. It’s not advertised, but laws aren’t applied as strictly here as long as we don’t cause trouble outside the sector. It’s our safe space. It isn’t a Dark Triad outlier’s fault that they were born with the need for high risk, is it? It’s unfair to apply common laws to us. We have a disability. So, it’s an unofficial compromise. The Commonwealth lets us be, and we know to stay keep to ourselves. What happens here stays here.”

  Based on his knowledge of his former clients, Nick had thought that it would be wise to keep an eye on the Dark Triad travelers after they left this place. But Earth’s ethics wouldn’t allow it, and in any case, it wasn’t his problem.

  Johan shifted his position, sticking the bedding package between his lower back and the wall for added comfort.

  “Anyway, I don’t think I need to further advertise my services – I trust that you appreciate the teaser. In brief, I can hack the implant of your mysterious Elisabeth, and you can steal whatever blackmail material you hope to find to trade for your girlfriend,” he said in a more serious voice.

  Nick felt his face muscles relax slightly. The guy wasn’t a nutcase, and he got Nick’s request precisely right.

  “There is a price of course. And, as I said, you’re pretty destitute, my desperate Romeo. But you got lucky … again. I don’t need any m
oney – for me, money’s easy enough to get. I care about something else altogether. I am a freelance scientist, you see, and I want to run an illegal experiment on a human brain – your brain – in this case.”

  “What sort of experiment?”

  “My research is of no imminent importance to you, my curious friend. Not to mention that it wouldn’t be all too wise for me to share much detail with you in case we are unable to strike a deal. The only things that you should be worried about right now, for our bargaining purposes, are the potential side effects for your mind.”

  Nick silently agreed, but he suddenly noticed a glaring glitch in this setup.

  “Why bother about my consent when you are in range? Why not stun me with a neuro-assault transmission, which I’m sure you own, and just do whatever you want?”

  “Well, let’s see,” Johan rolled his eyes to the ceiling, “maybe because I oppose violence as a solution … or, maybe,” he winked, “because I need your cooperation.”

  “Lucky me …” Nick croaked. “So, what are the side effects, then?”

  “Memory damage,” Johan quickly said in a clear voice, his lisp momentarily gone.

  “How bad?”

  “You see, that question is one of the main reasons for my test. Worst case it turns you into a drooling idiot.”

  Nick’s mouth went dry.

  “But that’s very unlikely, based on my research,” Johan paused. “What’s up? Lost your courage?”

  Nick imagined Lita strapped to a chair in the investigation room of the military headquarters on Beta Blue, and the rest became irrelevant.

  “I’ll do it,” he said simply.

  There was something rather out of character in Johan’s eyes now.

  “Now lucky me …” he said with unexpected relief. “It has taken me fucking ages. Everyone else has bowed out at this point. You see, after hearing the price all my aspiring customers realized that their needs weren’t as dire as they had thought,” he winced, as if remembering something annoying. “But we seem to have an understanding, so let’s go ahead and visit my workshop. We both happen to be impatient, for our corresponding reasons, my courageous friend.” He then jumped up from the cot, “By the way, I blocked you from other hacker attacks. Not sharing you with other vermin here,” he spoke in a very lighthearted tone again, carefully studying Nick’s face from the corner of his eye. “I gave you a neuro-transmission shield as well. No need to thank me, I am a selfish bastard. I need your brain intact.” He headed to the door, “Just so you know, we’ll be taking your flyer; mostly to cover my tracks, but for nostalgic reasons too. You see, my headhunter used that same exact model as yours all those years ago.”

  “Kir …” Nick started and broke off at the sight of Johan’s grin.

  “Kir, bring down the shuttle,” said Johan. “To be clear, my genetically superior accomplice, I will maintain control of your implant to guarantee my safety. You are so much stronger than me. Handpicked genes and all that,” Johan gave Nick an innocent smile, and stepped out of the room.

  The shuttle was already waiting at the building exit, and Johan promptly settled in the host chair, inviting Nick to follow.

  “Kir, take us … right here,” Johan said touching a point in the air. “It’s not too far, just over an hour.” The shuttle gently rose into the air, stabilized at a low altitude, and began to glide in the specified direction.

  “Now, since our deal is underway, let me explain your exact role,” Johan dropped his clowning manner and looked at Nick with an intensity that was freakishly similar to Hilgor’s trademark expression. Of course, thought Nick, this piercing investigative look was a known feature of all Dark Triad people.

  “Fortunately, your former profession, and your genetic fuck up makes the whole thing easier. It would’ve been a drag to drill certain things through the thick skulls of your compatriots. For example, why am I risking prison instead of hanging out with the outliers? Or, why do I work in this shithole instead of enjoying Earth’s best research facilities. But you … you’ve met people like me – in fact, you are one of us. We tend to be obsessed, as you know. We don’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I came up with an idea back home, and it has been consuming me. But our technology was a joke. It was frustrating as hell. So when one of your colleagues made me the offer, I didn’t think twice.”

  Nick glanced out the window, trying to get a sense of direction, but the identical architecture made it hard to track their flight path without Kir’s help.

  “Your science was amazing indeed … I guess my home world deserved what it got, thrown back to the Stone Age because of that epidemic of yours, which I trust we had nothing to do with. Oh, well,” Johan’s smile wasn’t even remotely nice. “Technology wasn’t the only thing Earth stole from us by the way. I read a lot of ancient literature once I got here. You know, it was worth it to come just for that, really. But I’m digressing … I was given the best technical resources, and I caught up quickly. I became the best hacker in the Commonwealth, and I still am by a long shot. Sorry, I’m not one for false modesty,” he said picking up on Nick’s skeptical expression. “I can run circles around the rest of them and do whatever I want in cyberspace without anyone ever noticing. But, you see, that’s exactly what’s wrong! Nobody should be able to be the best, Nick! The scale is infinite in both directions – of all people, you should know that. Sooner or later, someone better will come along from one of the closed Mirror clones – perpetual rat race, and never an end in sight.”

  He was talking quicker now; his lisp worsened, making his speech harder to follow, and Nick had to lean forward so as not to miss anything from this pressured rant.

  “But there is a solution, Nick. You see, if the data are saved directly into brain cells, it’ll be impossible to hack the host. Just imagine, your living body becomes the only key. Nobody would ever be able to steal information from anyone else, not even under physical threat – activation of brain fear centers would automatically block data transfer. That was the dream I had at home, and, imagine, your biotechnology was almost there. It took me some time, but I designed data exchanges between brain tissues and implant chips – but only theoretically. I needed to have it verified, which is where I got stuck. Brain simulators were too simplistic – test files kept becoming corrupted,” Johan’s face was now twitching in a vaguely unpleasant way, and there was a disturbing glimmer in his widely open eyes. “I was sure my program would work just fine on a live brain … with some possible host memory damage in the early versions. But, of course, experiments on humans were out of the question. I could have tried to beg for an animal subject as an exception, but it wasn’t worth it because I wouldn’t have been able to measure the exact extent of memory loss. It was a dead end, and I was told to let it go.” Johan’s smile was almost vicious now, “But you see, your people brought us to Earth, and they didn’t really get who we were. And we are rather tenacious when it comes to chasing our dreams. I had no patience for Earth’s humanitarian bullshit.”

  He was right, thought Nick. This is exactly what made him different too.

  “I told them to go fuck themselves and threw their cybersecurity chief title in their faces,” Johan’s face twisted into a contemptuous grimace. “I moved to Earth3. Remember, authorities don’t bother us here. So I built a makeshift lab, and started searching for people like you, who had nothing to lose. I needed to see how my program works on a live brain, so that I could fix the remaining bugs. Making the download repeatable is trivial, just a final touch. Then I’ll return to Earth and demo it on myself, for all these morons to see.” Johan was looking past Nick, and his voice was harsh and derisive as if he was engaged in the old fight with some obstinate and hostile audience. “Nobody would object to me using my own brain as a test bed. One thing you got right on your sterile world is the freedom to fuck up your own body.”

  The shuttle made a wide turn and started descending t
owards an isolated patch of abandoned industrial grounds. Nick never expected to see a real slum inside Commonwealth’s boundaries, but the landscape below fully qualified. Johan caught his surprised look and chuckled.

  “This plant exceeded its functional lifespan a long time ago, and it wasn’t economical to upgrade it or even to knock it down. They just rebuilt the factory in a new location, leaving this behind. These leftovers work great as squatting quarters for the most ambitious segment of our population. We like it, and the police don’t bother nosing around.”

  The shuttle landed on a small plaza hidden between silent manufacturing structures, all of them marked by a somber air of dilapidation.

  “So here is the exact deal, Nick,” said Johan, his eyes clear and serious again. “I’ll connect you to Elisabeth’s implant. In return, I’ll upload my file to Kir’s memory, transfer it to your brain and then download it back to Kir. You’ll trigger these processes by creating certain mental images. Then we’ll check the extent of your memory loss. Listen, don’t prepare a hanging rope just yet,” he added, watching Nick’s face. “You know what, maybe I nailed it. Maybe there isn’t going to be any damage at all. I am very good, Nick – and I am not exactly a monster. I would’ve tested it on myself long ago, but how would I work on the tweaks if my memory got messed up?”

  Nick shrugged his shoulders. Memory loss wouldn’t exactly be helpful in his case either, but there wasn’t another option on the table.

  “Fine,” he nodded, “let’s go.”

  The moon was almost full, and the sharp black shadows of twisted pipes on the rooftops ominously stretched across the plaza making the place look positively haunted. Nick wondered about the purpose of this former factory, but immediately regretted taking his eyes off the ground as he narrowly avoided stumbling over a deep crack in the crumbling surface. He cursed, picked up speed and caught up with Johan, who was waiting for him in front of the most preserved building.