Grip (The Slip Trilogy Book 2) (9 page)

Luce curses under her breath. “You’re right,” she says. “We screwed up, both of us. We’re imbeciles. Check, we freaking care about you and sometimes that makes people do the wrong thing.”

“All you had to do was tell me from the beginning and I would’ve been happy for you,” Check says, his hands hanging loosely at his sides. He looks tired. Exhausted.

“Did we ruin everything?” Benson says, feeling as if all oxygen has been pumped from his lungs. He can’t lose his best friend. Not now. Not ever.

“Gahhhh!” Check growls. “You two are impossible sometimes. But I refuse to let our friendship be ruined by your stupidity. Assuming you find a way to make it up to me, that is.”

“We will,” Benson says quickly.

“We’ll be open books from now on,” Luce adds.

“Fine. You’re forgiven. It’s not like I can avoid you guys in this godforsaken compound.”

Benson manages an awkward laugh. “And you don’t want to hit me?” he says.

“I do, but not because you and Luce have a thing. Because for being so smart you can be a real moron. You’re just lucky I was never very good at holding a grudge.”

Benson feels a flower of relief bloom within him. Relief at not having any secrets from his best friend. Relief that his friend is still his friend. And yet…he still feels sick. Check might’ve forgiven him quickly, but it’ll take longer for him to forgive himself.

“Hey!” Harrison says, interrupting, pointing a finger in the air. His other hand is roaming along the bed, trying to grab Destiny’s knee. She’s pushing it away, inching toward the edge of the bed. His hand stops suddenly and he forms a gun with his fingers, aiming it at Benson. “I know how to save him.”

“You’re drunk,” Benson says.

“And yet still smarter than you,” Harrison says. “Listen to me, baby brother.”

“I’m two minutes younger than you.”

“Sometimes two minutes make all the difference.”

Technically that’s true, but Benson doesn’t think it applies in terms of intelligence—only birth authorization. He sighs. “Okay. What?”

“Our father, the dishonorable Michael Kelly, the esteemed ex-Head of Population Control, the arrogant celebrity and very important pers—”

“Harrison,” Benson says. “Get on with it.”

“Right,” Harrison says, slurping another sip of fizzer from his straw. “What was it again?”

Luce looks at Benson and says, “Are you sure you two came from the same womb?”

“They look identical,” Check points out.

“Could be a weird coincidence,” Luce says hopefully.

“No,” Harrison says, the two-letter word coming out even more clipped, like
Nuh
. And again: “Nuh. He’s my little bro, and I’m gonna protect him till the day I die. You mess with him, you mess with me. Got it?”

Benson’s not sure who he’s asking, but Rod says, “Amen,” and Gonzo says, “You’re preaching to the choir.”

Harrison raises his hands like a real preacher addressing a congregation and says, “Hear me out.” No one says anything. “Our father was prepared. Before Mom got knocked up, he applied for and received a dual Death Match, didn’t he? One of the matches died so they got one birth authorization. They got pregnant, and then found out they were having twins. Little Harry and Benny, you follow me?” Harrison keeps asking questions, but Benson figures they’re rhetorical because his brother barrels forward, not waiting for a response.

Check, on the other hand, is less patient. “So what?” he says. “We’ve all heard this story and know exactly how it ends. The other Death Match, some old dude, turns out to be a
dud
. Really smart doctors figure out a way to cure whatever terminal illness he had, and the guy keeps on ticking. He lives, thus signing Benson’s death warrant.”

“Obviously that leaves us with only one choice,” Harrison says.

Everyone stares at him, apparently not seeing the obvious.

“We have to kill Benson’s dud. His old Death Match has to die so he can live.”

Gonzo laughs and Rod chuckles and Luce rolls her eyes.

Janice says, “A Death Match is supposed to die,” like it’s a rule that should never be broken.

Benson just sighs, somewhat relieved that his brother is drunk and not thinking clearly.

Check, however, strokes his chin, as if taking the proposition seriously. “The Death Match has to be expired by now,” he says. “Especially after you were born. There would’ve been no reason to renew it, not when Janice had already had one child and wasn’t pregnant with another. Legally, Benson didn’t exist in the system. Plus, that was years ago, surely the guy ended up dying of something else. Someone else would’ve received the birth authorization.”

“You don’t know my father,” Harrison says. Benson realizes his brother sounds more lucid than he has since he returned from the club. Is he being serious? he wonders. “Think about it. He was the face of Population Control despite having a Slip for a son. Despite his many faults, Michael Kelly was a very determined man. He never gave up on Benson. And he wouldn’t have given up on the prospect of Benson becoming a legal citizen either. The whole time he would’ve been looking for loopholes. Maybe he found some. But none of them would have mattered until Benson’s Death Match was dead.”

“This is all speculation,” Check says.

“What if I can prove it?” Harrison says.

“Prove it or lose it!” Janice says.

She finishes one fizzer and starts another, but Benson barely notices, his eyes never leaving Harrison’s. “How?” he asks.

“A friend I know can help,” Harrison says. “His name’s Wire.”

~~~

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“C
het! Open up!” Harrison bangs twice more on the door, Benson on one side, Check on the other. They left the others back at the sleeping quarters to get some rest.

“Who is it?” says a muffled voice on the other side.

“Shut up, Chet, you know who it is,” Harrison says. He’s feeling better now that his brain is working again; after drinking three fizzers, it’s as if a thick fog has lifted.

“Who’s Chet?” the voice asks.

Harrison grits his teeth and growls, “Wire. I meant Wire. Now let us in.”

“It’s the middle of the night,” Chet, who prefers being called Wire, says.

“It’s always night down here,” Harrison says. “And don’t pretend like you were sleeping.”

There’s silence and Harrison thinks for a moment that Wire’s decided to ignore them. He raises his fist to pound even harder, when the door creaks open. Wire’s pale face appears between the gap, red tufts of hair sticking up from his scalp at odd angles. Anyone else would guess that the teen
had
been sleeping, but Harrison knows better.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” Wire says, his eyes flicking between the three of them.

“We’ve got a mission for you,” Harrison says.

“You need me.” The hacker’s eyes light up annoyingly. It seems to be his mission in life to get Harrison to say he needs him.

“Your country needs you,” Harrison says, stealing a classic line from the recruiting pamphlets his father used to bring home.

“No,” Wire says. “If this was official Lifer business, Jarrod would’ve sent one of the others to see me. And not in the middle of the night. This is a personal request.”

Harrison swallows his pride and says, “You got me. We need your help, oh God of Hacking, oh Breaker of Encryptions, oh Father of Destructive Viruses.”

Wire grins. “That’s what I thought, although you didn’t have to be so dramatic about it. Come in.”

His face disappears, leaving a glowing void where his acne-riddled skin had just been. When the door doesn’t open any wider, Harrison realizes his friend has moved further inside, not bothering to let them in.

His hand fisted, he pushes the door open with his knuckles. A wash of light splashes from the room, which is full of glowing screens. A real hacker’s paradise.

“Come on,” Harrison says, urging Benson and Check to follow him.

Wire is seated at a desk, one hand fiddling with some sort of a control while his other hand strokes a disgracefully thin red goatee. His eyes are glued to a large holo-screen on the wall, mounted just above where his feet are balanced on the desk. Three-dimensional images pop in and out of view. A cobra, its fangs bared. A giant wall. What appears to be a grenade, exploding in mid-air, so lifelike that Harrison can almost feel the heat.

“What are you doing?” Check asks as Benson shuts the door behind them.

Harrison fires Check a look. It’s the wrong question to ask Wire.

Wire leans back in the chair, twisting his head to look at them, still fidgeting with the control and his wispy beard. “I’m so glad you asked,” he says. “Most people think the most challenging part of unleashing an unstoppable string of super viruses on an impenetrable government network is the
doing
part.”

“It’s not?” Benson says.

Harrison groans as he sees the delighted look that flashes in Wire’s eyes. He’s got an audience and he’ll take full advantage. Dropping his feet from the desk, he spins in the chair to face them. As his fingers fly across the control, the images continue to cycle from the holo-screen behind him. “Look, no hands,” he says, dropping the controller. “12B revert to waiting position, delete trail, erase entry point, open tunnel for 11C and pull back…pull back…NOW!” The images flash and bounce and react to his voice commands like obedient soldiers.

“Look, Wire, we don’t have time for all this,” Harrison says.

Wire screws up his face. “All this”—he waves his hand around the room—“is what helped save your brother’s life.”

He’s right. Without Wire’s network virus as a distraction, Benson might’ve never survived. His tone softens. “Thank you, Wire. You really kicked Pop Con’s ass last week.”

Wire’s eyes light up at the compliment. “I did, didn’t I?”

“But don’t let it go to your head.”

“Too late for that,” Wire says, grinning. “The Slip asked a question though.”

“Don’t. Call. Him. That,” Harrison says.

“Touchy touchy,” Wire says.

“It’s okay,” Benson says. “It’s what I am.”

“No,” Harrison says. “It’s not.
Their
labels don’t apply to us.
Father’s
labels don’t apply to us.”

“Benson asked a question,” Wire says, rephrasing. “No, for a skilled and talented hacker like me, unleashing the virus was the easy part. The hard part is pulling the virus out and not getting caught. I have to be like a ghost in the night.”

“Why not just leave it in there?” Check asks.

Wire raises a finger. “One, because eventually they’ll crack the virus, and then they’ll know how to stop it in the future.” A second finger pops up. “Two, because only a two-bit hacker would send a virus on a suicide mission. I’m an artist.” He says it like he’s French—“arteest.” He raises a third finger. “And three, the threat of the virus hitting them again will be enough to drive Pop Con’s analysts insane.”

“Awesome,” Check says.

“Impressive,” Benson says. “And thanks. For helping my brother help me.”

Wire waves it off as if it’s nothing, but Harrison can see him beaming inside. “No problem. Now what can I do for you tonight?”

“This is going to sound impossible,” Harrison says, “but we want you to hack into Pop Con’s Death Match archives.”

“There’s a reason ‘possible’ is included in ‘impossible,’” Wire says.

“That’s deep,” Harrison says. “And it makes no sense.”

“Maybe not to you,” Wire says. “Anyway, what you’re asking is child’s play. Is that seriously all you got?”

“It might be just the start, depending on what we find,” Harrison says.

The prospect of more seems to entice Wire, and he swivels in his chair to face the screens. “All programs revert to auto-reverse,” he says. The holo-images fade away and are replaced by a single prompt: Command? Wire begins speaking a series of letters and numbers and words that make no sense to Harrison. As hard a time as he usually gives Wire, he’s completely in awe of what he can do with technology. He might have called himself an artist, but really he’s more of a composer, able to conduct an orchestra of holos into terrifying symphonies.

Wire keeps at it for another few minutes, throwing an occasional curse into his monologue. Harrison isn’t sure whether those are part of the commands or a display of frustration. Eventually Wire says, “Nice try, bastards, but I gotcha! We’re in.”

“Meaning what?” Harrison says.

“We can see everything. Every freaking record for the last fifty years.”

“Seriously?” Check says. “How did you learn to do all this?”

Wire laughs. “While Harrison here was being a good little student and attending all his classes and winning hoverball games, I was cutting class and learning useful life skills.” A flash of anger spills through Harrison, but it disappears just as quickly. Wire is right. He let the system feed him propaganda while he satisfied himself by becoming popular.

“The school let you do that?” Check asks.

Wire winks. “They put up with it for a while, but I got kicked out eventually. My mother was furious until the money started rolling in.”

“Money?”

“At first I just did freelance jobs. You know, stupid stuff, like investigating husbands and wives who thought their spouses were cheating—most of them were—or helping rich kids play pranks on each other. It paid well enough, but wasn’t that fulfilling. I wanted to do something real. Something important to test my skills at the next level.”

“And the Lifers contacted you,” Harrison says.

“Thankfully, no,” Wire says. “The way it all happened was way better. I hacked their communication network and sent them a message offering my services. Jarrod was so shocked that I’d busted through their firewalls that he gave me the job. And they pay far better than all my other gigs combined.”

Harrison tries not to show it outwardly, but he’s impressed. What he did required initiative and perseverance, something he never thought Wire possessed.

“You’re more like us than…” Check trails off, his gaze drifting to Harrison.

Even though Harrison bonded with Benson’s friends over a few drinks, he knows he’ll never be one of them, not in their minds. Us and them. He’s the “them.” The gap between his life and his brother’s seems to widen further, until he can barely see the other side of the canyon. Even Wire is on the other side, and they only just met him.

“Now what?” Wire says.

“Pull up Michael Kelly,” Benson says quickly. Harrison’s eyes dart to his brother’s, but Benson doesn’t return the look. He’s staring at the holograph streaming from the screen, which is already showing his father’s face, rotating slowly in a circle, having responded to the command. Harrison watches as Benson bites his lip.

“Whaddya want to know?” Wire says.

Harrison says, “Does he have any outstanding Death Matches?”

Wire frowns at Harrison, but the system is already cycling through pages of data, searching for the information. “I thought your father was dead,” he says.

Benson flinches. Harrison says, “He is. But Death Matches survive beyond the grave, until both parents are dead.”

“Your crazy mom?” Wire says.

“I swear to God I’m going to knock your teeth out the back of your throat if you call her that one more time,” Harrison says.

“Okay, okay, geez. Touchy subject.” The spinning information stops and zooms in on a single line:

Michael Kelly: One Death Match Outstanding.

“Impossible,” Benson whispers.

Harrison smiles. He was right.

~~~

Private Forum for Agriculturists, by invite only:

Password required: **********

Password accepted, access granted.

JoseCuervo: My contact in warehousing informed me that there was another major food surplus this month.

SamAdams: How major?

JoseCuervo: Enough for at least a twenty percent increase in the population.

BloodyMary: Twenty percent!? What’s the current margin of population error published by Pop Con?

SamAdams: One-tenth of one percent. A couple hundred thousand people, mostly made up of UnBees, Slips, and illegals, like Jumpers and Diggers.

ShirleyTemple: Sorry, just arrived, got held up with a minor situation. So you’re saying there’s enough food being produced to support another hundred million people?

JoseCuervo: That’s exactly what I’m saying.

BloodyMary: Where’s it all going?

JoseCuervo: That’s what I’m trying to figure out, but it has to be going
somewhere
. Otherwise it would just end up spoiling. Or they could be preserving it and storing it in case of an emergency.

SamAdams: Keep us posted. Same time in two days?

JoseCuervo: Agreed.

BloodyMary: Yes.

ShirleyTemple: Wouldn’t miss it.

***Chat terminated by chat leader***