“You heartless, soulless bastard,” said Marisa.
“I’ve already destroyed any evidence linking my family to this company,” said Omar. “But I can’t cut the power to the server without everyone out there ending up like Franca. Six thousand eight hundred and twenty-three people. I’m not a total monster, you know—I want to release them all safely, but I don’t know how. We’re locked out of the root software.”
Marisa struggled for words, not knowing what to say, or how. Finally she walked toward him, opened her hand, and slapped him across the face as hard as she could.
Omar glowered, but didn’t attack her back. “I deserved that,” he said darkly.
“How many guards are in the server room?” she asked.
“None,” said Omar. “They all went downstairs when my car flew into the lobby—I assume I have you to thank for that?”
“Thank Sahara,” said Marisa. “My revenge is coming later. For now, get me to those servers.”
He turned back through the open door, motioning for them to follow him down a long, dark hallway. “What happened to your arm?”
“Calaca,” said Marisa. “He’s going to catch hell, too, if I make it out of here alive.”
Omar grunted. “Shut this place down and I’ll make sure you do.”
“Here it is.” Omar stopped in front of a door and swung it open, revealing the room beyond. A bank of server towers stood against the west wall, drawing local and external power, just like they’d guessed. The south wall was lined with monitors, some showing lists of data, some showing security images, and some showing live feeds through the eyes of Bluescreener puppets locked in combat with the gangsters outside. In front of the monitors, set up on folding tables, were more screens and drives and keyboards, linked together with a vast tangle of cables. The most important feature, however, was the center of the room, which held a pillar of ad hoc computer parts, surrounded by five VR chairs, spaced around it like petals on an industrial flower. More cables snaked between them. The only person in the room was lying in a chair, jacked into the cylinder and oblivious to the rest of the world. Marisa stepped forward, looking at his face.
It was Lal.
TWENTY-THREE
“That’s how they control them,” said Omar. “Or at least that’s how they’re supposed to. They jump into your body just like jumping into a VR game.”
“Or a Futura Baron,” said Sahara. “Thanks for those access codes, by the way.”
“I never gave you the access codes.”
Sahara smirked. “Thanks anyway.”
Marisa stepped closer to the VR setup, trying to decipher how their system was laid out. “What are they doing?”
“Active control can override whatever malware is turning the users into combat drones,” said Omar. “Lal was hoping we could figure out how to reverse it permanently by looking at the infected djinnis in person, but so far they haven’t found anything they can use.”
“So it’s malware?” asked Marisa.
“None of the programmers put anything like this into the code,” said Omar, gesturing at the screens on the wall. The battle outside was a chaotic mess. “At least nothing they’ll admit to. With Nils and eLiza dead, Rodriguez here is the only actual programmer left, so it’s not like any of them profited from it.”
“Nils is dead?” asked Sahara.
Omar gestured at Lal. “He found out Nils betrayed him—went to someone behind his back, trying to get out.”
Sahara nodded. “That was us.”
“Let’s assume it is malware,” said Marisa, “and not just a glitch. Who would profit from it?”
“None of us,” said Omar. “None of the puppets. None of the megacorps we’ve been trying to infiltrate—a disaster like this is bad for all of them, especially the ones that make djinnis, like I said with Ganika. They’re going to want this whole mess to disappear as quietly as possible, not burn the city down and kill seven thousand people.”
“Right now it doesn’t matter who did it,” said Sahara. “We have to find a way to undo it.” She walked to one of the chairs and picked up a djinni cable. “How do you select which mind you jump into?”
Omar shrugged. “A menu system, I guess? You’re not going to use it, are you?”
Sahara lay down on the chair. “You’re damn right I am. We’ve got to get Anja out of there before she gets herself killed.” She plugged the cable into the jack at the base of her skull. “Okay, this makes sense. There’s a rudimentary menu, but mostly it’s just a list with a search function. I’m finding Anja . . . there she is. Going in.” Sahara’s body went inert, and one of the wall screens lit up with a new view: the view through Anja’s eyes, in the middle of the battle. “It’s the end of the fracking world out here,” said Anja’s voice from a speaker.
“Can you hear me?” asked Marisa.