Burn Code

His place was a dump. It always had been but that was part of its charm. No one suspected he was a cop and therefore gave a detective of the Cyber and Neural Crimes division a full show of whatever illegal crap they were involved in. Unless it was truly heinous, Fesserton didn’t bust them but used their activities to find larger fish. Large piranhas like Grendel.

“Let’s get this over with,” I said, moving through his entry way into the living room with the overstuffed couch. “So I can flush the port or set my head on fire.”

I stripped off my jacket and tossed it on the arm rest. “Possibly both.”

Fesserton laughed. “Melodramatic much, Cara?”

“Shut up and touch me.”

One of his eyebrows hooked as he sat next to me. “I don’t remember you being this...aggressive.”

I stared at him. “I’m about two seconds away from telling you to stick it up your ass. Touch me.”

Touch was still the securest form of initiating a transaction between two personal nets. One to open a protocol port and the other to access it for data exchange. Business transactions used a good, old-fashioned hand shake. Personal transactions used a multitude of other methods.

Skin-on-skin gave more rapid transference since signal strength increased by proximity. Fingertip transfer was the best. Sensor pads implanted into the fingers allowed them to be used with virtual keypads or gesture programing to control the nanites.

“Fine.” Fesserton caught my arm by the wrist but also snaked a hand to grip onto the tattoo I had on the back of my neck. The red Ouroboros there housed my sensory node. With barely a thought he could send a small current to his fingertips. Feedback between his sensor pads and my tattoo brought the node online in epic proportions. The cool touch of his fingers was frigid. The coffee I smelled on his breath was bitter.

“You’re a bastard,” I growled and gritted my teeth against the chills. My optic lenses increased the resolution of my normal sight and every pore on his face stood out in vivid detail.

“Yes, yes I am.” He smirked. “Give me that port.”

“Fine, but get your hand off my neck.”

Once he complied, I gave him a stiff slap before repositioning his hand to meet mine, palm to palm and fingers to fingers. He tongued his the inside of his cheek and smiled.

“There.” I opened one little point in my middle finger. “Make it quick.”

The gesture wasn’t lost on him and he chuckled. Fesserton blinked as he briefly glanced away, accessing his own data stores to route into our shared port. I probed it, testing its borders, but he had back access locked and the jack on my TPU prevented me from poking any further.

“Behave.” He warned as the stream dumped into the one data block I had given him. Until I cut the connection, he had the ability to do anything he wanted to with the file. I watched through my optics as he pulled it apart, separating the files out.

“You ready?” Fesserton asked, taking a deep breath. I nodded, waiting for his slide show. By the time he was done outlining the mounting evidence as he displayed it, our hands had fallen between us on the couch and I was clutching his coat with the other.

“Do you understand now?”

I broke contact. Breathing was the only thing preventing me from getting sick. Pulling myself to the edge of the couch, I rested my forearms on my thighs and cradled my head in hand.

“I understand I’m going to be a lamb at slaughter.”

“No, Cara, you won’t.”

He slid closer and the cushion dipped with his weight. I startled when he gently touched my shoulder to push aside one of the straps on my shirt. Hyper aware, I wanted to shrug him off but the masochist in me prevented it.

“Paul, I—”

“Do you ever regret it?” He interrupted. His hand smoothed over my skin, a finger etching the raised line of ink that outlined a pair of circling koi. It was older tech with limited capacity, but the artist had done an exceptional job. The fish rippled with color when accessed — I never had the heart to replace it and it was beyond an upgrade.

I closed my eyes against the sensation. I envisioned elbowing him in the chest, but it didn’t materialize. “Regret what?”

“Us.” His finger paused. “I always liked this one. What’s it storing now?”

I wanted to punch him square between the eyes. “I hated you for a very long time. I still might.”

Fesserton chuckled. “Way to sugar coat it.”

I stared at him. “What do you expect? You screwed me and then you arrested me. I usually know when I’m getting played and I go with it ‘cause it’s fun for awhile, but you — you strung me along from day one.”

“I did.” His expression softened and a frown turned his lips. “And I still feel guilty about it. Whether or not you believe me, I loved you — still love you.”

Gaping at him, I shook my head. “Loved me enough to bust me?”

“Cara, you neurofried four people!”

I shrugged out of his touch and slid further away on the couch. “’People’ is giving them too much credit. They were rapists and child pornographers, Paul! Monsters you cops let go!”

“Help me now,” he implored, thumping his chest with a finger. “Help me to legitimately catch this guy! You have connections and routes that I don’t have, Cara.”

My lips turned in a bittersweet mockery of a smile. “Had connections! You made sure I lost half of those when you arrested me! What makes you think any of them will talk to me now?”

“Because they’ll be wanting to get this bastard off the streets just as much as I do — he’s bad for business.” He gripped my hand. “If anyone can do this, you can.”

“I can’t be that good if a washed out cop managed to catch me.” Venom dripped from my lips. “Find another puppet.”

“The reason I caught you was because of this thing.” His voice was hard as he pressed his thumb into the ink of the Bast tattoo on my forearm. “You left a damned calling card. ‘You have been judged and found wanting’ — that’s what the hieroglyphs in this translate to, isn’t it?”

“You know it does — your expert testified as much!” For the second time in one night, I struggled to pull my arm free of his grip.

“Cara, I only thought you’d lead me to the person that fried those deadbeats.” He didn’t squeeze any harder, but he didn’t let me go either. “The fact that they were criminals is how you got five years probation instead of ten years jail and a neurofry of your own.”

Neurofry — a tat user’s worst nightmare of having any and all ability to interface with the nanites completely severed. It was a fitting punishment for anyone who used the tech to significantly harm others. Whoever this Grendel was would be sentenced to at least that.

He sighed and fixed me with a heavy stare. “Honest truth — there isn’t a damned day that goes by where I don’t miss you, Cara.”

For as messed up as our whole scenario was, I missed him too.