Read Online Tails You Lose by Lisa Smedman - Free Book Online
Authors: Lisa Smedman
Tags: Science-Fiction
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leaned forward. "Where were you between the hours of ten-thirty and midnight, five evenings ago?" It was Alma's turn to frown. "The night that Gray Squirrel was extracted?" she asked. "At my apartment, in bed. Asleep."
Mr. Lali coughed softly and touched an icon, activating the table's cyberdeck. Flush-mounted monitors illuminated in front of himself, Hu and Alma. "I'd like us to review the recordings that were captured on the night of the extraction. Hu thinks there may be something we missed."
Alma saw Hu tense and braced herself. Watching the vidclips of Gray Squirrel's extraction hadn't been easy, even when she still believed that her friend was alive. Now that she knew he was dead, they stung even more. She was ashamed to have failed Gray Squirrel, and to have let PCI down—and now Hu was going to rub salt in that wound.
The monitor in the tabletop glowed a solid blue and then flashed a series of codes as it loaded the vidclips they were to view. A long string of numbers appeared briefly—81, 64, 49, 36, 25, 16, 9, 4, 1—and then a date/ time sequence that flashed by so quickly Alma was unable to read it. Then the monitor checkerboarded into a dozen squares, each showing a freeze-framed vidclip of the PCI parking garage from a different angle. Some showed rows of parked cars, while others were aimed at exit doors. Still others showed the stairwells and ramps. One of the split-screen images had been shot by a remote-piloted drone and was currently freeze-framed at an angle that showed an empty access ramp.
Alma and Hu had been over the security cameras' recordings dozens of times already, in second-by-second, image-enhanced slow play. She didn't think another byte of information could possibly be wrung out of them.
Hu touched an icon on the monitor screen in front of him, and all of the vidclips began to play.
Alma watched a vidclip near the center of the screen—one that showed Gray Squirrel entering the garage through a secure door that led to the elevators. According to the clock superimposed on the vidclip, it was 11:05:02 p.m.—the same time, plus or minus one minute, that the overly punctual Gray Squirrel always left the building. The researcher walked to his car—a four-door Toyota Elite—and activated its door locks by voice command. Settling into the cushioned leather seat, he reached for the car's control cable. He was just about to plug it into his datajack when the intruders appeared.
There were four of them, and they came out of nowhere, emerging from behind a concrete pillar into the vidclip that showed Gray Squirrel's car. How they had gotten into the garage was a mystery that PCI security had not yet solved.
First to appear was the man Tiger Cat had put a name to yesterday morning. Wharf Rat was an Asian male, recognizable by his oversized, protruding incisors and his mange of black hair. One of his eyes was brown, the other gold. He jittered as if he was on kamikaze or some other combat drug.
Wharf Rat was followed by two Caucasian males, one dressed in Native buckskins and sporting what looked like animal paws woven into the ends of his dirty blond dreadlocks, the other a dwarf wearing an Okanagan Ogopogos combat biker T-shirt and black leather chaps. The dwarf carried an HK227 submachine gun, while Dreadlocks held what looked like an oversized grenade launcher with an enormous barrel.
The faces of all three had been captured by the securicams at a number of different angles. They'd been wearing nylon stockings that squashed their noses flat against their faces and distorted the rest of their features, but it had been easy enough to program the computers to account for the tensile strength of the nylon and produce a true rendering of each face. Alma had stored these digital mug shots in the headware memory that was hardwired into her brain and could call up profiles or full-face visuals on any of them at will. By now, she knew their faces better than the Superkids she'd grown up
Mr. Lali coughed softly and touched an icon, activating the table's cyberdeck. Flush-mounted monitors illuminated in front of himself, Hu and Alma. "I'd like us to review the recordings that were captured on the night of the extraction. Hu thinks there may be something we missed."
Alma saw Hu tense and braced herself. Watching the vidclips of Gray Squirrel's extraction hadn't been easy, even when she still believed that her friend was alive. Now that she knew he was dead, they stung even more. She was ashamed to have failed Gray Squirrel, and to have let PCI down—and now Hu was going to rub salt in that wound.
The monitor in the tabletop glowed a solid blue and then flashed a series of codes as it loaded the vidclips they were to view. A long string of numbers appeared briefly—81, 64, 49, 36, 25, 16, 9, 4, 1—and then a date/ time sequence that flashed by so quickly Alma was unable to read it. Then the monitor checkerboarded into a dozen squares, each showing a freeze-framed vidclip of the PCI parking garage from a different angle. Some showed rows of parked cars, while others were aimed at exit doors. Still others showed the stairwells and ramps. One of the split-screen images had been shot by a remote-piloted drone and was currently freeze-framed at an angle that showed an empty access ramp.
Alma and Hu had been over the security cameras' recordings dozens of times already, in second-by-second, image-enhanced slow play. She didn't think another byte of information could possibly be wrung out of them.
Hu touched an icon on the monitor screen in front of him, and all of the vidclips began to play.
Alma watched a vidclip near the center of the screen—one that showed Gray Squirrel entering the garage through a secure door that led to the elevators. According to the clock superimposed on the vidclip, it was 11:05:02 p.m.—the same time, plus or minus one minute, that the overly punctual Gray Squirrel always left the building. The researcher walked to his car—a four-door Toyota Elite—and activated its door locks by voice command. Settling into the cushioned leather seat, he reached for the car's control cable. He was just about to plug it into his datajack when the intruders appeared.
There were four of them, and they came out of nowhere, emerging from behind a concrete pillar into the vidclip that showed Gray Squirrel's car. How they had gotten into the garage was a mystery that PCI security had not yet solved.
First to appear was the man Tiger Cat had put a name to yesterday morning. Wharf Rat was an Asian male, recognizable by his oversized, protruding incisors and his mange of black hair. One of his eyes was brown, the other gold. He jittered as if he was on kamikaze or some other combat drug.
Wharf Rat was followed by two Caucasian males, one dressed in Native buckskins and sporting what looked like animal paws woven into the ends of his dirty blond dreadlocks, the other a dwarf wearing an Okanagan Ogopogos combat biker T-shirt and black leather chaps. The dwarf carried an HK227 submachine gun, while Dreadlocks held what looked like an oversized grenade launcher with an enormous barrel.
The faces of all three had been captured by the securicams at a number of different angles. They'd been wearing nylon stockings that squashed their noses flat against their faces and distorted the rest of their features, but it had been easy enough to program the computers to account for the tensile strength of the nylon and produce a true rendering of each face. Alma had stored these digital mug shots in the headware memory that was hardwired into her brain and could call up profiles or full-face visuals on any of them at will. By now, she knew their faces better than the Superkids she'd grown up
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