Geek Mafia: Mile Zero by Rick Dakan (reading tree txt) 📖

Chloe had come home, having been out with Sandee scouting a real estate developer as a potential mark. Paul had managed to hide what he’d been doing from them as they came through the door, although Chloe was a little pissed that he’d failed to meet them at the Green Parrot for drinks like he’d promised. But he hadn’t been able to hide his new addiction for long. If it weren’t for the fact that running and attending the party was insanely fun and enjoyable, he knew he’d have had a much harder time pulling himself away from the game each night. He’d already developed a cabal of online friends who he played with regularly, and he even felt a little guilty when he went too long without logging on and checking in with them.

He stared down at the screen now, as a dead woman lay in their freezer out back and a criminal conspiracy was swirling into existence around them. He watched as the last few seconds ticked away on the display and a message popped up on his screen: “You’ve won auction for Lvl. 30 Green Crystal Weapon Enhancement. 5,720 credits deducted from your account.”

“You won,” said Chloe.

“I did,” agreed Paul, clicking off the message.

“What’s a Green Crystal whachamacallit?”

“I don’t know. One of my guild members wanted it for something.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah.”

They sat in silence for a moment, looking at the screen where absolutely nothing of interest was happening.

“You really should…” Chloe started.

“I know,” Paul said.

“It’s just that…”

“I know, ok. I know. You’re right. I should just cancel the damn game.”

“I mean, play a game, sure. Why’re we here if we can’t play games when we want to? But try something else. Try World of Warcraft or EVE Online or something else. Anything but that.”

“I just keep thinking that somehow this will work out for me,” said Paul.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know what I mean,” he said, and he didn’t. He just had a sense that somehow if he kept playing that it might lead to him getting even with them for taking his name off it. “It’s like, by playing it in secret like this - it’s like I’m stealing back from them. They have no idea that I’m in there. That I’m still playing a role. And if I get powerful enough I might be able to… I don’t know. Do something.”

“Do something to them?”

“Yeah.”

“We kinda already did some fucking things to them. Worse things than you’ll ever accomplish by playing their game and paying them money.”

“Well, it’s not my money.”

“They don’t care. They’re still getting paid.”

“I know.”

“It’s just stupid.”

“It’s not stupid!” he insisted, even though it obviously was. “Listen, ok. I know it’s weird. But there’s something I need here, ok? Something important to me.”

“No, there’s nothing important in there at all, Paul. Nothing. You’ve got to let that shit go and…”

“I don’t have to do anything.”

“What you have to do is fucking get your head in the game,” said Chloe, her voice turning cold and harsh. “You may have forgotten about Raquel out there in the freezer, but there’s some serious shit…”

“I haven’t forgotten anything!” Paul shouted. “You think I’ll forget a dead fucking body? I haven’t forgotten that. Just like I haven’t forgotten that it was your goddamn friend Winston who dragged us into this bullshit with Eddie and Isaiah and whoever else. We had a good thing going here in Key West until all these freaks and geeks showed up and…”

“Don’t you lay this on me!” Chloe shouted back. “Don’t you fucking dare lay this on me. This is the life. This is the life you chose. I didn’t kill that woman, and I didn’t ask these people to come here. I didn’t choose this insane little island to live on. And I wasn’t the one who got fucking fired from my own company for being a lazy clock watcher. So don’t lay your shit on me. You’re the one…”

“That you tried to steal from,” Paul said, cutting her off. “The one you strung along and cock-teased and tried to take three quarters of a million bucks from. The one who you let get set up by your friend Raff…”

“Oh, this again,” she said, standing up from the table.

“What do you mean again?” snapped Paul. “We’ve never even talked through this shit…”

“But it’s always there, isn’t it?” asked Chloe. “It’s always the fucking elephant in the room. You think I don’t get your snide little comments and jokes? You think it doesn’t bother me when you say shit about me stealing from you? You know I feel like shit for what I did! You know I do! But you keep digging. You can’t help it can you? And when you play that fucking game,” she pointed at the screen. “Every time you play that it means you’re going to be bitchy to me for the next few hours. Guaranteed.”

“That’s funny,” said Paul. “Because you know when I want to play the most? When I need to escape from you constantly giving me crap for how small this town is. How insane this island is. How fucking hot Key West is. How frustrating it is to find good marks here. How much you wish that there was a decent Mexican restaurant…”

Something flashed on the screen in front of him, catching Paul’s eye. He looked down at the game on his laptop for a second. There was a message on the screen. He assumed it was from one of his fellow guild members and was about to resume his tirade when he realized how weird the message really was. He looked closer and read it again.

“Oh that’s fucking typical,” said Chloe. “You can’t even have a fight with me without checking on your auction for a green crystal dildo or whatever the fuck…”

“Chloe, look at this,” said Paul.

“What?”

“Just look at this. Tell me this doesn’t mean what I think it means.”

On the screen was a small, in-game window that signified a priority message from a fellow player. Only those who you had approved as trusted in-game friends could even send you such messages, but Paul had never seen this screen name before. Nor was the name in blue, like it would have been if it was a game master. The message read:

Isaiah2342: YOU SHOULD LOWER YOUR VOICES.

Chloe came around the table and looked at the screen. “What the fuck…” she whispered.

Paul stared at the message, confused. Was this some weird coincidence? That seemed impossible. Chloe sat down next to him and leaned forward, peering close. She typed into the game’s chat window.

Who is this?

After a moment’s hesitation, the mystery sender confirmed Paul’s suspicion.

ISAIAH OF COURSE.

Chloe and Paul exchanged glances. Paul looked out the bank of windows that lined three walls of the room, but saw no sign of anyone out there, much less Isaiah. Not that that meant anything. Bee had cameras and microphones all over town, and no one ever noticed them either. But Paul found the idea that Isaiah had them too very, very disturbing. And the fact that he could monitor them in their home was beyond frightening.

Ok, we’re being quiet, typed Chloe. Now will you stop spying on us?

I’M NOT SPYING ON YOU. BUT IF I WERE, ALL THAT SHOUTING WOULD MAKE IT VERY EASY TO DO SO.

Fine we get it. So are we done?

ID LIKE A STATUS REPORT.

About the body?

Paul watched as the words disappeared almost as fast as Chloe finished typing them.

THIS IS NOT A SECURE MEANS OF COMMUNICATION.

Then stop using it, Chloe typed and then held down the laptop’s power button until the screen went black. She turned to Paul and leaned toward him.

“How easy was it for him to do that?” she whispered into his ear.

“I don’t know. Not easy. I don’t even know how he figured out what my screen name is,” he whispered back.

“This was the first time you’ve played since you met him, right?” asked Chloe, her breath hot in his ear. He nodded. “And you were on less than an hour.” He nodded again.

Paul’s heart thumped in his chest. He saw what she was getting at. Either Isaiah had hacked his laptop and Metropolis 2.0’s chat system in under an hour, or he and his Crew had been digging into Paul and Chloe before they ever met. Neither option gave Paul any comfort at all. Nor did the fact that the two weren’t mutually exclusive - he could be skilled enough to hack the game in under and hour and prepared enough to have been checking them out for days or weeks or months. No matter which scenario you chose, there was no denying that he and Chloe were way behind in the game.

Chloe stood up and took Paul’s hand, pulling him to his feet. She led him quietly inside the house and shut the door behind them. They moved upstairs to Bee’s room without saying a word and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” they heard Bee shout.

Bee and the room hadn’t changed in the last hour. She was still perched in front of her wall of monitors in the dark, looking through the camera array. Paul glanced at the monitor showing the map of Key West and saw that Sandee’s dot was still at the party, but that Eddie’s dot had left a trail of time stamps as he passed within range of RFID detectors. The last one showed him entering the Hyatt resort off Mallory Square about ten minutes ago.

Chloe shut the door behind them and then plucked a roll of tape from a hook on the wall. Bee shot them a look when she heard Chloe start to peel off long strips of tape to seal the cracks around the door.

“What’s going on?” asked Bee, a note of panic in her voice. Bee’s was the only room in the house well-shielded against surveillance. When they’d moved in they’d put up aluminum sheets and/or screens of fine copper mesh over every surface before hiding them beneath a layer of plaster. The tape Chloe was using had more metallic mesh woven into it. When she was done the room would be, theoretically, sealed off from all kinds of electronic signals and eavesdropping. Even their cell phones didn’t work in the room.

“It’s Isaiah,” Paul explained. “He’s spying on us.”

“How do you know?” Bee asked.

“He just hacked into Paul’s game while he was playing,” Chloe said as she applied the last strip of metallic tape. “And he made it very clear that he could hear what Paul and I were talking about.”

“You mean yelling about,” Bee said.

“Whatever. The point is, he heard us. He’s watching us. And from now on we can’t be too careful.”

“Why did he tell us?” Paul asked, although he was talking to himself as much as to the two women.

“Because he wanted us stop yelling about dead bodies,” Chloe said.

“Which is good advice,” Bee chimed in.

“Yeah, ok. But still…”

“But why tell us like that?” asked Paul. “It’s very flashy. He could’ve just called my phone. I was actually expecting him to call and get his status report. So why hack into the game and contact me there.”

“He was showing off,” said Chloe. “Trying to spook us.”

“And it worked,” Paul admitted. “But actually I think this is a good thing.”

“What?” Bee and Chloe said almost at once.

“How is it a good thing?” Chloe continued.

“Well, ok, not a good thing. But not the worst thing. He’s tipping his hand, right? He’s letting us know not only that he’s watching us, but that he’s