All Thieves are Grey at Night

Two children faced the front door to The Meadows Bar and Lounge, the premium destination for adult entertainment down in the Asphodel district. The eldest child, a boy no older than six with a mop of golden blonde hair and large blue eyes, held a bundle containing a still baby less than a year old. They both watched the front door. AutoID tried to match the face of the boy and baby against an illegal link to Persephone’s central database, but found no matches. These two boys had not been pre-registered for Perserphone’s citizenship program.

Balancing the baby, the eldest boy knocked on the door to The Meadows again. This time the door quickly swung open and warm yellow light enveloped the children. The Dante-pop was now more audible, but not as much as the gruff male speak-shouting from the doorway,

“Sweet Jaysue! There’s fucking kids ‘ere!” A female, and yet somehow even gruffer voice responded from further inside,

“Send them home, if their dad wanted to be with his kids, he wouldn’t be here, would he?” The door began to close on the children until the boy said in a clear, calm and compellingly melodic voice,

“Wait. Our father isn’t here. Our parents are gone. We need help. I don’t know how to feed my brother.” The door paused midway through closing, the boy’s big blue eyes appearing even bluer and bigger in the doorway light.

The male voice, somewhat softened, said,

“Alrigh’, get in ‘ere, quick.” The boy confidently walked through door with his baby brother, and the door slammed firmly behind them.

Caeso paused the footage and tapped his compad a few times. He turned to his brother, Cassius, who was in the driver’s seat focusing on navigating the unused sewer canal. While a better driver than Caeso, driving manually without navigational assistance on a wheel–based vehicle was still a challenge.

“I reckon you were ‘telepathesising’ even back then, maybe unknowingly. There is no way Charles would have let us through those doors on a normal day.” Cassius shrugged, the darkness from the night refusing to reveal his face.

“Maybe. It’s not like I remember that night.” Cassius voice was very similar to Caeso’s, the same accent and cadence, but deeper and smoother, “We’re about five minutes out.” They drove for the next six minutes in silence until Cassius pulled the car up to an unmarked services door, seemingly at random along the hundreds of service doors they had already passed.

“This one?” asked Caeso.

“Exactly 4.32 kilometres from the sewer entrance.” Cassius quickly exited the car, as did Caeso. They walked over, side-by-side, a small light above the service door illuminating their faces. Caeso spared a glance at his brother’s stoic face. Cassius and Caeso had been mistaken for twins often, despite the four-year age gap. But there were small differences. Cassius was about an inch taller than Caeso, bringing him up to a rounded six feet tall. While they had the same facial structure, including bright and wide eyes, and smile, Cassius’ eyes were a crisper blue, compared to Caeso’s murky green/blue, and his hair was slightly more sun-bleached, despite the ever-present cloud cover on Persephone. Cassius’ jaw was also more chiselled, although that could be a result of having a more serious outlook.

Cassius inserted the key-card into the slot next to the door and it slid open with an efficient schick. The other side of the door was a small room with a single, steel ladder rising up through the middle.

“Cass, where’s the—”

“Over here.” Cassius had already found a small case in the corner and unclipped it. He pulled out a pair of jumpsuits. The sense of irony was not lost on Caeso.

“Wait? The janitors here actually wear jumpsuits? I thought that was only in the holodiscs?”

“The LSME are penchants for aesthetic tradition. You didn’t notice them wearing the three-piece suits out in the market complex?” The two young men quickly slipped the jumpsuits over their skins and began to scale the ladder until Caeso, leading the way, reached the maintenance hatch. It was unlocked, as agreed.

Caeso performed a quick twist on the wheel and pushed himself out into a dimly-lit service corridor. As he stood up straight, he felt the breeze of a single fléchette pass by his neck. He reactively drifted away from the feeling just in time to avoid another two fléchettes as they passed through where his cheek and eye had been a moment before.

Caeso collapsed to the ground with a yelp and held his hands above his head while yelling,

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Cease fire!” From the darkness, there was a conspicuous absence of magnetically accelerated steel darts, followed by a tentative,

“Sorry, do you work here?”

Caeso stood up slowly with his hands still hovering near his ears.

“Yes, clearly. Can’t you see my obvious janitorial uniform?” From the gloom emerged a black-clad operative with low-light vision goggles, a MAG pistol and body armour; all-in-all, a standard LSME security outfit.

“Oh! I’m so sorry. You came out of the floor, I thought you were a ghoul!”

“A what?”

“A ghoul… you know, a creature that rises from graves to eat flesh?”

“No… don’t think I’ve seen that one. I’m just here to do my job.” The guard looked Caeso up and down.

“Are you a cleaner?”

“I prefer the title, Sanitation Consultant, but yes, cleaning is something I consult in.” The guard stood awkwardly, unsure how to respond. “Now, do you mind?” Caeso leant over and shouted down the hatch, “Bring up the scrub bot and automop.”

Cassius had been waiting a foot below the lip of the chute. He waited another half a minute before making a show of popping he head up.

“Oh, hey there. Give me a hand will ya?” Cassius held out his hand and flashed the guard a smile. Despite the helmet, Caeso could almost see the sparkle in the guards eyes.

“Thanks, mate.” Cassius smiled again, slapped the guard on the shoulder and began to walk past him toward the room’s exit.

“Wait! What about your things?” Cassius turned around, flashed him another winning smile, and said,

“Don’t worry about it, it’s like we were never here.” The guard immediately dropped his pistol, walked back out of the room and disappeared down the hallway. Caeso sighed, picked up the pistol, and said,

“You know, I had that. He wasn’t going to tell anyone.”

“No… he wasn’t going to shoot us… again. But you think once it became apparent a theft had occurred in this building on this night, he wouldn’t point the finger at us?”

“Well, when you put it like that…”

“C’mon. Face masks on.” Both men touched a metal ball clipped to their ears which emitted a low whine before fading away. The small sparks surrounding their heads were barely perceivable to casual observers. But to a camera, they would just appear as two men with blurry, static circles for heads.

The VP-Direct elevator was a small walk from their entry point, and easy enough to find their way to thanks to a detailed map and a forged VP passkey. Once inside the elevator, the two brothers relaxed for moment.

“So, who are we?” Cassius asked.

“Some up and comer called Gregory Chinzano. Plenty of late-night visits, so this visit won’t raise any system flags.”

“He’s not visiting tonight, right?”

“Yeah, he’s at some corporate drug party. We’ll be fine.”

The brass-coloured doors dinged open and the pair deliberately made their way through the corridors of the VP floor, home to dozens of lavish offices for the most elite of the LSME.

“Your malware will work?” Cassius asked casually.

“For the price I paid, I hope so. It was built by some hot-shot, reclusive kid-hacker in the city-proper.”

“I guess this will be the test of that.” They strolled through the corridors they had both memorised for another minute in silence. Caeso looked at his brother,

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you ask of the malware will work?” Cassius slowly turned his head.

“Historical precedence.”

“This room, right?” asked Caeso, changing the topic. At the far side of the VP floor, they had arrived at a door that simply said, Storage Room. Caeso pulled a black sponge out of his pocket. It rippled slightly in his grip. He held it to a pad to the right of the door. It rippled again before the pad blinked green and the door slid open. The lights inside the room turned on as they closed the door behind them.

‘Storage Room’ was accurate as it was barely bigger than a bathroom, with shelves running along the left and rights sides of the room. Various forms of electronic stationary stocked the shelves. The compads, blank credit sticks, transfer hubs, stylus’ and portable computers were all from the most expensive of LSME-owned brands. But, more importantly, at the very back of the storage room was knee-high stack of boxes with blinking lights; the VP secure server.

Caeso crouched down in front and pulled out a BlackSlab Mini™ with its transfer cord and plugged it into the only port on the server. Caeso also pulled out his compad to track its process.

“Well, it seems to be working.” Cassius just nodded, his head flicking suddenly towards the door as if hearing something unperceivable. “Everything alright?”

“I thought I felt something. But it’s gone.”

“Not the actual cleaners, is it?”

“Not at this time. How long until it’s done?”

“Well, the anti-virus and anti-malware is constantly trying to repair and fight this program while the program is taking small packets of data when it can, then building out the files with those packets. So, I’d estimate around 40 minutes to transfer the three terabytes of underling data we need.” Cassius sighed and sat down against a shelf.

He frowned and gave his brother a side glance.

“You don’t know anything about programming.” Caeso turned and smiled,

“Nah, but for a moment you thought I did.” Cassius pause, then laughed, to which Caeso couldn’t help but laugh as well. It was hard to get Cassius to laugh these days, but when he did, his whole face lit up, and the laugh was infectious, although Caeso suspected it wasn’t only infectious in a metaphorical way.

The door to the room slid open four inches and a grenade rolled over to Cassius’ feet. The two men simultaneously sucked air through their teeth and the grenade went off.

* * *

Caeso Gray awoke to find he was looking down at his legs. It took him a few minutes to orientate himself before he realised his head was slumped forward and he couldn’t move his arms or legs, not because he was paralysed which was his first thought, but because they were bound.

“See, no need for threats, your brother is fine,” came an unfamiliar voices in the far distance.

Realising his neck was not bound, Caeso looked up and around. Cassius was also in a chair next to him, his arms and legs through braces attached to the chair legs and arms. Was this chair designed to hold people?

In front of both of them was a large desk made out of wood which was not only impressive because of it being actual wood, but also because the size meant something had to be broken to bring the desk into this room. The desk only contents was a personal computer hooked to a clear screen, and a single stylus resting in the middle of the desk.

Behind the desk was a young, blue-grey suited man with slicked auburn hair, dark eyes and cheek bones that came with an implementation cost. He lounged back on a padded chair with his polished shoes up on the desk, not bothering to look up from his compad.

There were also four black-clad, armed guards in the room with guns trained on them, but that was really just being pedantic about the trouble they were in at this stage.

“Whose- who’s this?” Caeso slurred. Cassius who seemed to have regained his faculties much quicker responded,

“This is Gregory Chinzano.”

“Nawww fuck,” said Caeso. Chinzano carefully placed his compad on the over-sized desk and looked at both of them with a brisk smile.

“I glad you are awake Mr. Gray, I was just telling the other Mr. Gray how impressed I am with both of you. Pre-tech fingerprints emulator, schedule from my driver, malware program, pre-Scream sewer maps, all enhanced with a bit of psychic know-how,” said Chinzano, tapping his head with a knowing smile, “This was a very efficient and well-organised operation… except for the fact you chose me as your pawn. If you had chosen any of the other VP, they wouldn’t have picked up on the two data requests made in the past six months, the fingerprint test run made over in Elysium three weeks ago or the real uplift in my PA’s mood over the past two months… Caeso. But! Here we are.” Chinzano reached forward and picked up his compad before leaning back even further – the chair creaking at the same time as the guards who were still standing around lowered the guns and clicked some buttons on the side.

Caeso looked over and met Cassius’ eyes. Caeso nodded his towards Chinzano and rolled his eyes. Cassius just shook his head and mouthed, ‘I tried.’

“Alrighty then… here we go. Caeso and Cassius Gray, currently inhabitants of sector 5, also known as Asphodel or, as we know it up here, that fucking shit-hole. However, neither of you have a Perserphone Citizenship Subscription. Let me rectify that for you right now.” Chinzano tapped his compad a couple of times and it gave off a little celebration sound, “There we go, I put you on the premium program,” he looked up to give them a quick wink.

“Now of course, you both should have subscribed when you turned twelve, which means per the terms and conditions of your new contract, you have a number of years of retrospective membership fees to pay. It seems you both appeared out of nowhere around 25 years ago, so I would say you,” Chinzano pointed his finger at Cassius, “…have around 17 years’ worth of fees to pay. And you,” Chinzano turned his finger to Caeso, “…have around 14 or 15 years’ worth of fees.” He looked down at this compad.

“Actually, minus the three-month trial period for both. I’m not that cruel.” Cassius and Caeso exchanged another look.

“Now, if we factor in the late fees, work out the bimonthly fee increases… oh dear. It seems you collectively owe the LSME $2.3 million credits, rounded up per article 147(b)i amendment three within the terms and conditions. Now, if we add on normal penalties for breaking and entering, conspiracy to commit theft and, now that you are subscribed to Perserphone Citizenship Premium Plan, conspiracy to commit treason. That’s another $2.3 million credits in fines apiece.” Chinzano tutted and shook his head.

“Not looking good for you gentlemen.” Cassius opened his mouth, but Chinzano held up his finger. Cassius slowly closed his mouth. Despite not appearing much older than either Caeso or Cassius, Chinzano exuded a level of authority that came from spending a lifetime having his needs immediately met at all times.

“But, while things are not looking for you now, there is an opportunity here. We have a series of excellent payment plans that will help you both pay off your debts over a 30 to 65 year period via gainful gig work. Let me just add you to that payment plan – luckily we already took a sample of both of your blood so I can sign on your behalf. And…” Chinzano dramatically raised his digit finger above the compad and brought it down firmly, “… done.”

Chinzano slowly stood up out of the chair and brushed invisible dust off his jacket.

“And that’s that. Pleasure doing business with you both, we will see you nice and early tomorrow morning. Welcome to the LSME.” Chinzano jogged around the desk and shook Cassius’ and Caeso’s immobile hands. He walked through the middle of the chairs and the armed soldiers also shifted back, moving outside of Caeso’s periphery. From behind them, Chinzano left them with a final message,

“Oh, and I should add, the unapproved requisition of company property is not allowed under clauses 7 to 18 of your contract – punishable by immediate termination of your employment and your fucking lives.”