The thugs that had been waiting in the alley, if it was an alley, came at them with the mindless savagery of machines set on kill. The program carried him through the motions. At least it wouldn't let him ruin the choreography, and the hotsuit compensated as much as it could for his lack of physical ability. But it wasn't up to his usual standards of verisimilitude.
Perhaps, he thought as Caritha took down some of the attackers with sting-shots from the cam, it was all the painkiller coming between him and the illusion. He was too aware of the sensors plucking at his nerves, delivering the simulated sensations of punches and kicks, both giving and getting, with more of the former, of course. The program didn't have a masochism setting.
What the hell, he thought, watching his fist smash dead center in the head of a shadowy figure. He had a little more experience with this than he'd had a couple of hours before. His face throbbed against the inside of the headmount, but the feeling was distant and painless, less immediate than the sensation of impact the sensors put to his knuckles and ran up his arm. When you hit someone, you were supposed to feel it yourself, after all, though the program made tough stuff out of you-taking a punch or giving one, you could just shake it right off. Like Marly; he had a glimpse of her jabbing her fist into a thug's midsection, doubling him over so she could give him a knee in the face. He fell back as another one threw liiinself at her from the side, slamming them both into a wall. They went down, and a moment later the thug was flying backwards, arms windmilling. Gabe stepped to meet him and managed a fair imitation of a karate chop to the back of his neck.
Marly saluted and then looked alarmed. Before she could shout a warning, he took a giant step to the right and clothes-lined the killer that had been about to take him down from behind. He turned to see how Caritha was doing.
She was having a ridiculous tug-of-war over the cam with the last of their attackers. Forcing his arms up high, she tried to kick him in the crotch, but he danced out of the way, still keeping a grip on the cam. Gabe took a step forward, but Marly was already flying past him. She tackled the thug from the side, and they all fell to the ground together with the two women on top. Gabe took another step toward them and then looked around.
The alley was empty again, except for the trash. Dutifully the hotsuit gave him the sensation of cold chills and goose bumps. He stared down the length of the alley, trying to discern if there might be one more. He didn't know; they were on blind-select. Cautiously he turned toward Caritha and Marly, who were still busy pounding the thug into the ground, and then felt the presence at his left elbow. One more, of course, the old just-when-you-thought-you-were-done-you-got-a-surprise-fist-in-the-face ramadoola. He braced himself, and his face gave a sudden throb shot through with a sharp pain. The sensors in the headmount were far more limited than those in the 'suit, but he didn't think he could take even the limited illusion of another punch in the face.
He came around swinging fast and hard and felt the peculiar shock of connecting with nothing. He turned around quickly, fists up, but there was nobody to hit, no one next to him at all, but the sense of another presence remained strong. His jaw was throbbing nastily now, anticipating the blow.
"Alone at last," Marly said, looking up and down the alley. The spot where she and Caritha had been beating up the attacker was also empty.
"Solidified holo," Caritha said knowingly, brushing herself off. She examined the cam for damage. "The only place it's actually solidified is in your mind. They must have shot our retinas when we came in, ran an analysis of our wavelengths, got the subliminal code."
"I hate that," Marly said. "I just hate it when they use your mind against you like that. If we'd had the savvy to walk through here with our eyes closed, they never could have touched us, but once you've seen one of them, the illusion's burned in, even if you close your eyes after that. You gotta fight em."
"You walk through a dark alley with your eyes closed if you want," Caritha said. "They'd have just had something a little more substantial waiting for us."
"Maybe," Marly said, massaging her knuckles, "but I hate giving them the satisfaction of knowing they made me hurt myself instead of them having to do it themselves."
"You want a fair fight, become a boxer." Caritha started up the alley, and Marly followed, beckoning to Gabe.
He looked around quickly and then found it, a strange spot about the size of a dime floating at the limit of his peripheral vision. Glitch in the program, he thought, irritated.
"Hey, hotwire!" Marly called, invisible now in the darkness ahead of him. "You comin', or you waitin' for the night nurse to come out and collect you for your bed in the ward?"
The glitch floated dizzily, then sailed around him to plant itself on his right. He turned again just in time to see it shrink sharply, as if it were receding up the alley after Marly and Caritha. His jaw sent a spear of pain all the way to his temple. He winced, automatically putting a hand to his face and making contact with the outside of the headmount, ruining the illusion completely.
"Uh… I'll meet you later," he called. "Disconnect.
He was about to stash the saved program in the lockbox under the desk when it occurred to him to check the system's security status.
Everything was normal, no intrusion had been registered, which could have meant nothing. It was the worst-kept secret of the computer age that B amp;E programs outdid watchdogs regularly. His own imagination getting the better of him, he decided. He was too toxed to concentrate on the program, but he could jump at shadows. As if Manny could spy on him without his knowledge. The only person he could think of who was capable of a hack like that was Sam. Or some of her friends.
But someone else had been there in the program. The thought refused to go away, and he leaned on the console, trying to think through the pain in his jaw that also refused to go away. It didn't make any sense. Neither Manny nor anyone else could audit him without an official corp requisition for an audit program, which would automatically notify him he had company. And without an audit requisition, the system was impenetrable. Was supposed to be impenetrable, nominally to preserve employee confidentiality but actually to discourage in-house hacking.
Someone else had been there in the program, his mind insisted. Whether that made no sense or all the sense in the world, someone-or something-had been there. Possibly a hacker cracking in from outside and moving on to some other part of the system when nothing of real interest showed up.
His inner eye could see the glitch-spot zipping away up the alley. Not winking out or closing, but moving away. Going to Marly and Caritha. As if it found them more interesting than it did him. But this time he hadn't left the program running along without him; if the glitch had indicated an intruder, the intruder had been thrown out when he'd ended the run.
He put a standard breach-of-security report on the flat-screen, started to fill it out, and then paused. If he reported his suspicions, he'd have to provide a copy of the simulation he'd been running. And wouldn't Manny be interested in that.
Groaning, he sat back in the chair. He could just shoot himself and get it over with, that would take care of everything.
Shit. Call it a hacker. A hacker wouldn't get far; Diversifications' security would either throw the hacker out, or lock on for a trace and subsequent arrest. Either way he wouldn't be involved. Even if a hacker got something from him, what use could it possibly have been? House of the Headhunters had been so generally available, even collectors didn't care that it was out of release, and it wasn't like he was sitting on a pile of sensitive information.