The Celeb and the Cyko

by Daniel Bayn

Guttersnipe tumbled out of his limo with a full entourage in tow. His crystal ball hovered around them, already recording every moment in 360 degrees of high-def color and digital sound. A trio of girlie girls hung on his tattooed arms, jockeying to get their painted faces beneath the hovering camera. He accepted their kisses and caresses for a few, indulgent seconds, then shooed his eye candy back into the aero and started across the rooftop.

A cipher trailed behind Guttersnipe. His face was hidden behind a flat, black mask and a leather satchel was slung over his shoulder. It contained the intrusion devices Mercy had been promised. They had better be worth putting up with this ego-saturated celeb, she thought with a smirk.

Mercy popped the camera off her ear piece and turned it towards herself. "The moment of truth is upon us, dear faithful. Soon, all your prayers will be answered, your generous donations repaid with interest. I thank you for supporting my modest lifestyle these past few years and hope you will do the same for other Enlightened Communist revolutionaries during the term of my incarceration."

"Hey, the Snipe is here, ready to rock-n-roll!" The punk had finally managed to strut his way across the tower's sprawling roof.

Mercy snapped the minicam back on her ear piece and stood to meet her unlikely partner in crime. "If you have the music, I'm ready to play."

Guttersnipe snapped his fingers and the cipher opened his satchel. Mercy took a peek, pretending she recognized any of the blinking gadgets inside. She nodded, as if satisfied, and said, "Lets go." With that, she snatched up her umbrella and stepped off the roof.

The musician didn't skip a beat. He snagged the satchel, stepped over the side, activated his hover 'chute, and drifted down to a balcony four stories below. "Serrated, microfilament knife. As seen on TV." He produced a pen-sized object from the satchel and twisted it between his fingers. The blade that extended from one end looked more like a hair than a cutting edge; if not for the red glow (a safety feature), it would have been invisible.

"Unlike a torch, it produces no heat for climate control to detect. Unlike a saw, it won't set off any seismic sensors in the glass." Mercy couldn't tell if the explanations were for her benefit or that of his hypernet audience. She took the knife and started slicing. "My cipher on the roof is handicapping their security cyber as we speak, and since we'll only need a few seconds, these babies will handle the rest."

The Snipe pulled a pair of silver canisters from the satchel and tossed them through Mercy's new door. A cloud of milky fog exploded inside, obscuring the entire room for a moment before fading to semi-transparency. "The patented ObfuCorp fog absorbs our body heat and disperses infrared radiation." He handed Mercy the last item in the bag. "Can we pick up the tempo a bit?"

This item, she knew. It was a dedicated code-breaker with a hypernet uplink, uniquely equipped to tap into this office's closed network. Mercy took the wafer-thin device and danced through the window. The office was sparsely furnished, though the walls were covered with antique crucifixes and reprinted, biblical paintings. One may have been a portrait of Elvis; it could be hard to tell in the Evangelical States of America.

Mercy alighted behind the office desk, slapped the code-breaker down, and let the cyber do its thing. The programs chattered away at around fifty terabytes per second until the code-breaker proved more persuasive and the desk sprang to life. "Alright, time to redistribute some wealth."

Guttersnipe had busied himself with adding anatomically correct details to a few of the paintings. "Not that I'm questioning our compassunist ideals, but what do you care about some banker from the E S of A?" The crystal ball spun on its axis, taking in the entire room at 150 frames per second. "Not that I'm complaining, since the good old People's Republic won't extradite," he winked at the hovering camera.

"Buddha's compassion extends to all," Mercy preached while her fingers flowed over the desk's display. "Those trapped in the backwaters of the world deserve the best life their societies can offer. This bank is a repository for the nation's limited wealth, keeping it from meeting the needs of its own people." The uplink purred. "One of my supporters wrote a program that will launder hundreds of millions of yuan and shepherd it to those in need for decades to come."

"Hey, great. All that gonna take you much longer?" Guttersnipe kept glancing at the smart tattoo on his forearm. "It's just about time for the big finish!"

Mercy's fingers froze. "I thought your cipher was keeping us in the clear."

"Oh, he is, but he also tipped off the cops about a minute forty five ago." The howl of police sirens drifted up from somewhere below the balcony. "Right on cue," the punk grinned.

A police aero with the ESA flag splashed across its hood rose into view, its red and blue lights saturating the ObfuCorp fog. "You are trespassing in an ESA-affiliated facility. Lie down on the floor and prepare to be taken into custody." Mercy snatched up the code-breaker and raised her arms above her head.

Guttersnipe pulled a smartgun from under his vest and screamed, "Censor this, god-boy!" before shattering the window with auto-fire!

Mercy's HUD lit up with tactical alerts as the cops powered up their assault guns. She dove over the desk, snatched her umbrella off the floor, and rolled back onto her feat squarely between Guttersnipe and the window. Her sylk umbrella blossomed open as the squad erupted in gunfire, peppering the room with bullets. A torrent of hot lead pushed her across the floor, but her shield cast a protective shadow over them both.

"Rock on," Guttersnipe said with a wink as he tapped the ammo selection keys on his smartgun. His next shot enveloped the squad car in cascading sheets of flame. The aero swung away from the balcony, removing the celeb and the cyko from its line of fire.

Mercy saw her opportunity and sprinted forward, then dove off the balcony! The Snipe was hot on her heels, but he leapt off the railing and vaulted onto the squad car's still smoking hood. Mercy could hear him wailing expletives as she plummeted past the first six stories. After that, she heard only the wind in her ears.

She kept her hover 'chute's override button in a death grip as floor after floor rushed by. When she hit the final hundred feet, she released the override and her 'chute sprang into action! It's gravitic field reduced her effective mass enough for wind resistance to safely break her fall.

Her HUD identified Guttersnipe's limo parked on the concrete below. Mercy drifted towards it but, just as she was about to touch down, the aero slipped out from underneath her! "Hey, ingrates!" she shook her fist after them... then noticed the flaming wreck of the squad car plunging towards her like an asteroid out of the night sky! Mercy planted her feet on the ground and sprang back up like a po-go stick; with her 'chute still on, the leap carried her up to the fourth floor of the tower. She clung to a window ledge as the aero smashed into the ground, washing the alley in a wave of shrapnel and fire!

Guttersnipe floated down through the smoke and wreckage, howling like a banshee. His crystal ball shadowed him, capturing it all with digital clarity. The limo swung back around as more sirens approached. "Rock fuckin' ON!" He holstered his smartgun and raised a hand towards Mercy, still clinging to the window. "Score one for the less fortunate!

"... You comin'?"