Dressed only in loose briefs and a pocket T-shirt, the fifty-two-year-old engineer lay propped against three pillows on the lumpy mattress. He was normally athletic and trim from riding his bike back and forth to work, but almost four weeks of sedentary living from broken legs, and nervous eating from his crimes, had made him doughy and sluggish. He kept the mini-blinds closed and the glowing screen of his laptop illuminated his whiskered face. He flicked through Wikipedia articles — using Tor and a virtual private network — looking at various island kingdoms that might turn a blind eye to a visitor who made substantial investments into the local economy.
Outside, the dogs fell eerily silent.
Odd.
Ackerman held his breath, half hoping they’d start barking again. He reached for the revolver, knocking a half-eaten carton of Mongolian beef off the nightstand. Breakfast. He set the revolver in his lap, in front of the computer keyboard. The sight of it just made him more nervous. This whole thing was turning to shit.
Noonan wasn’t answering his phone, which creeped Ackerman out as much as the Chinese women who’d come looking for him at his office. It was probably just that the squirrely little dude was scared out of his gourd by this whole affair. Hell, Ackerman was, and it had been his idea.
The back-door screen rattled, and for a moment he thought he heard footsteps on gravel. He sat up straighter, cursing the walking boots, and hobbled to the window with the revolver in hand. A stiff breeze shook the treetops, making him relax a notch. It was just the wind.
He stood at the window, peeking out through the blinds and wondering how long this paranoid feeling was going to last. A woman he recognized from down the street walked a little poodle — which accounted for the neighbor’s dogs going berserk. The pulsating ache in his broken bones brought renewed clarity to his situation. People who’d lost the possibility of millions — maybe even billions — of dollars had awfully long memories. He’d be running forever.
Ackerman and Noonan had become richer than either of them had ever dreamed overnight, if you didn’t count the years spent developing the neural network.
Ackerman’s goal was a non-player character that would actively move through the game along with the player — a character that was as excited to play the game as its human partner. When LongGame began to explore the game terrain on her own, they realized they had something. She was actively learning. Not merely working toward the win, she was making herself comfortable in her Cloud battlespace, playing because she appeared to want the knowledge that a new game would give her. She was minimizing the unknowns that made her… uncomfortable. LongGame appeared to understand that the more she played, the more she learned, and the more she learned, the more perfect — and stable — an entity she became.
The men and women on the board had once been visionaries, but now they’d turned into Wall Street stooges. The fire in their bellies was hardly even a spark anymore. Barry Fujimoto, the CEO of Parnassus, had pointed out that having a computer play the game for you was no better than cheating. And anyway, having a super-brain computer the size of a desk was one thing. If Ackerman wanted to develop his idea as part of a game, that brain had to be small and portable. Fujimoto wanted the tech developed but said they’d settle on an application later.
Ackerman had fumed about the CEO’s rebuff for a time, then decided that if someone was going to make money off his creation, it should be him, not a bunch of stockholders. He hadn’t even intended to cut in Noonan — until a soccer mom in a Subaru Outback crashed into him while he was riding his bike to work and broke both his legs. That bitch had cost him millions — and forced him to bring the Poison Dwarf into the deal.
Noonan would still have to come back for his family… or not. You could get yourself a whole new family for as much money as they had. Ackerman hadn’t told the little bastard about his own plans. Sure, he’d helped with the offshore-banking stuff, but that was just out of self-preservation. If Noonan got himself caught before Ackerman could leave, then everything was toast.
The back door squeaked again, like someone was pulling it open. It was funny how normal sounds became monster claws when you had a fortune in stolen money chilling in an offshore bank account. He was sure he’d locked the inner door. Hell, he would have nailed every door and window in the house shut if he would have had the tools — fortify himself until he went to catch his flight the next day. No one could possibly know he was here. Surely. Probably. He was just no damned good at being a fugitive.
He made a shuffling turn, thinking how good the bed would feel on his aching legs — and nearly swallowed his tongue when he saw two Asian women standing in his room. Completely naked but for operating-room-style hair caps, their skin glowed a dusky orange in the light of the bedside lamp. Both women were in their twenties, cut, like they were into CrossFit. He’d read about burglars who went in like that so as not to leave behind so much as a stray bit of thread as evidence.
In any other situation, Ackerman would have found two naked Asian chicks sneaking into his room exhilarating. Now he fought the urge to throw up.
He tried to speak but managed little more than a gurgle.
The nearest one lifted a finger to her lips. “SHHHH,” she hissed, her almond eyes sparkling in the faint glow of the lamp.
Ackerman’s mouth fell open but no words came out. His ex-wife’s revolver dangled impotently in his fist, the thought of raising it never even crossing his mind. The woman to his left moved toward him, snakelike, expertly kneeing him above the walking boot so he fell to the floor. She wrested the gun from his hand and took a half-step back, looming over him, tilting her head from side to side quizzically, as if to get a better angle.
“We require the passwords to your computer,” the one who had shushed him said. She was beautiful — but cold, like he imagined LongGame would be if she had an avatar.
Ackerman tried to push himself up, but the woman who’d tackled him pushed him down with the sole of her bare foot, snap-kicking him in the ribs for good measure. His diaphragm paralyzed, he made futile wheezing attempts to draw a full breath.
“Stay down,” she said, almost tenderly.
“I… you… what… do you want?”
The first woman squatted next to him, arms on her thighs, her knee only inches from his face. He closed his eyes, at once enthralled and terrified at her nakedness.
“This is very important,” the woman said. “I need you to provide for me all existing copies of Calliope. Your life depends on what you do now.”
Ackerman groaned as his bladder gave way.
Like a fool, he babbled an apology.
“It happens,” the nude woman standing over him said, nudging his face with her toe. Her tiny nails were painted bright pink, incongruous to the blackness of her eyes. How could something so beautiful be so—
She kicked him again.
“Calliope?” the squatting one said. She slapped his face. Hard enough that he tasted blood.
“My… partner…” Ackerman stammered through the ringing in his ears. “I don’t have any more copies.” He did not mention LongGame.
The squatting woman flicked her wrist. For the first time, Ackerman caught the bright glint of a blade in her left hand. It was small, a straight razor she’d kept folded in her fist, out of sight until now. His stomach roiled, and he gagged as the truth fell on him like an executioner’s ax.
The women hadn’t removed their clothes to keep from leaving behind evidence. They did it so as not to soil themselves with his blood.