One week. One week. A whole damn seven days. News outlets were popping champagne bottles and shooting confetti canons every few hours now that the 5/9 Hack had been ‘Reversed.’ People were calling it a miracle. They were calling it the strength of our government officials. The hard work done by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Done by the NYPD. Done by the simple insert-your-name-here man down the street who kept his business afloat when Ecoin was all anybody had to pay with.
Nobody was talking about fSociety anymore, and Elliot was over the goddamn moon about that. Robot visibly m1ssed the glory days whenever anything about the Hack being undone cropped up, but he was shutting up about it, mostly. Which had been weird. He’d only gotten pissed off a handful of times this past week and Elliot hadn’t even woken up to anything substantial broken. Just a few coffee mugs, shit like that. And he didn’t drink coffee, anyway.
He had yet to hear even radio static from the Dark Army. Darlene had seen better days. She’d been coming over to his house almost every day. Elliot was fixing desktop computer towers every moment he had for this little company right at the edge of town. People who had their shit fried by malware and their data stolen by people like him. Sometimes there wasn’t much to salvage. Sometimes all he needed to do was replace a fan or two. But it was work he could do from home. They didn’t make him dress any different when he dropped the stuff by or picked it up. They didn’t even really talk to him much. He could work from home.
It was perfect, so far. Robot usually sat beside him and told him stuff he already knew, and got snippy when Elliot said as much. But they were working together. Boring as the work was.
And all the while on the backburner, Elliot was concocting a plan to wholly incapacitate the goddamn 1%.
Whole hand smacking against his door, not a fist. One, two, three. Elliot looked up from his wiring where he was sitting on the floor, a tiny, blue, turn-to-activate flashlight in his mouth.
Was he being arrested again?
ASAC? Oh, shit, that’s right. The other guy got hewn to pieces.
Elliot took his flashlight out of his mouth. Rotated it to off.
“ DON’T ANSWER THAT. ” Robot said, getting to his feet as Elliot did. “ SHE’S AN OPERATIVE, NOW. SHE’S JUST A MOLE LIKE THAT OTHER SCUZBAG WAS. ”
“ You don’t know that. She could be fighting them. ”
“ OR SHE COULD BE PLAYING INTO THEIR EVERY GODDAMN WHIM. ”
At least they knew how to talk quietly between themselves. In Elliot’s head or whatever.
“ OH PLEASE, KICK THE DOOR IN, ” Robot whined, leaning against the wall beside the front door and crossing his arms. “ I’VE BEEN DYING FOR SOME FUCKING VICISSITUDE. ”
Elliot pulled his hood down off his head and fixed his hair as he opened the door.
“ Dom, ” he said. “ What’re you doing here? ” He didn’t stand aside. Robot turned to stand behind his shoulder and watch her, too.
Dom’s eyebrow quirked upward. Dom, huh? “We’re not on a first name basis, Mr. Alderson.” She reminded him. Although, she had to admit it was nice to get a break from hearing a stammered A-Agent DiPierro, please come in! She shifted her weight onto her left foot. Her eyes made a quick scan of what she could see of the apartment from where she stood.
Dom didn’t expect to see anything too damning from a simple glance. Elliott wasn’t going to have a big screen somewhere with the words I’M STILL IN THE DARK ARMY’S SYSTEMS! flashing in different bright neon colors. Dom turned at her waist, looking behind her, then facing Elliott again. “You live in a shitty neighborhood, Mr. Alderson. Hope you know that. I wouldn’t want someone listening in who shouldn’t.”
“Here’s what’s going to happen.”
She met Elliot’s gaze as best as she could. Dom had been trained in maintaining eye contact, it was easy for her, but looking into Elliott’s eyes for too long made her feel like a peeping Tom waiting to watch someone strip. Like she was seeing so much but also seeing so little. From what she could tell, he always seemed so lost in his own thoughts. Or battling them. Whichever, it wasn’t especially pertinent right now.
“You are going to invite me inside. I will walk inside and you will close the door behind me like the gentleman I just know you are.”
She took a single step closer to him, closing whatever distance that was left between the two, ignoring the bounds of the imaginary socially accepted circles of personal space people separated themselves with. In short, she was in his face. “Then we will talk, in private about some of the promises you’ve made and whether or not you’ve been keeping them.”
With a smile so artificial it could give you a cativity, Dom tilted her head to the side, red hair falling with it. “Capeesh?”
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