expected to see at a street fair, to be hanging as a decoration. She wanted to laugh, but she knew from the tip of the thing that it was still sharp enough to hurt.
“I see,” he nodded. “That’s rather presumptuous of you…I’m sorry, what’s your name?”
“Marina Dekare.”
He stroked his chin. “Wife of the recently deceased Four Nations banking exec, unavailable for questioning, and possibly seen hauling ass out of the Broadway Walk Hotel last night Marina Dekare? That’s impressive.”
“Glad to know someone enjoyed the show. What did you do? Tap into their network, and access the security feed? Or did you just hear about all of this on the news?”
“Let’s just say I was in the area, and leave it at that,” Alex responded, smiling. “However, I doubt that you are actually Marina Dekare.”
“Prove it,” Alyson spat.
“You look a hell of a lot younger than the portrait they showed of her with her husband on the news yesterday.”
“Ah,” Alyson trailed off.
“So what’s your name?” he asked again. His voice was calmer now, and he’d ceased posturing with the absurd weapon and big words. He tucked the narrow blade beneath his arm.
She swallowed, dropping the multi-tool into her hand. “Alyson.”
“It is…very interesting to meet you.”
“And you?” Alyson asked.
“What?”
“What’s your name? If you’re dragging me up here to deliver a little vigilante justice for some semi-innocent stalking, then I’d at least like to know whose bathtub I’ll be bleeding out in.”
“Alex,” he said. “So why follow me? I don’t buy the computer thing, so don’t bullshit me.”
Alyson tucked her multi-tool up her sleeve, and held it in place with the tip of her finger. She stilled herself, thankful that some of the pain in her hip was fading after the miserable stroll through town. “I figured it’d be obvious. I wanted one of your new mobiles.”
“Why in the hell would you follow someone back to their house just to steal a fucking telephone?” he asked through a hearty laugh.
“I ghost.” The specter of her pride shone through her words. “And my mobile got damaged last night when I was running from the police.”
“Wait,” he said. All signs of amusement fled from his face. “The cops are after you?” he asked.
“They lost sight of me after I got out of the Broadway Walk,” she responded, a smile parting her lips.
He seemed somewhat relieved. “So, you ghost? Did we just lose six years, or is that coming back into fashion again?”
“It never left, or well, it didn’t for me anyway. It’s about the only thing that’s kept me off of the streets,” she responded.
Alex nodded. “So you just…drift from person to person then? This isn’t just some little trip off the grid to see the south, and then you go home.”
“I’d have to have a home to go to for that to be possible.”
A glimmer of admiration flickered in his eyes as he cocked his head and smiled at Alyson. “That’s a hell of a life to live. The only people I ever knew who tried to ghost either gave up or, well, I guess you could say they never came back.”
Alyson leaned forward. “They got arrested doing something stupid? Like getting stuck with a murderer’s ID files matched to their physical specs?”
Alex’s lip twisted. She could see him piecing the story together in his mind. “No,” he said after a moment. “Tell me something; do you every try to play the role when you step into those people’s lives?”
Alyson nodded. “You have to.”
“It’s a fine line to walk, between one’s self and the face that you put on for other people. The mask you wear, that’s still made up of a part of you; even if you’re faking your personality to fit in with a crowd you can’t not be you on some level.
“I had a friend, Marc was his name, and he ghosted.”
“Wait,” Alyson interrupted. “How does a fine, upstanding citizen such as yourself get involved with people in my line of work?”
Alex smirked, and cast his gaze down the hall. “Let me finish,” he said.
“Marc was trying to hit every state in the union, even going out to Hawaii. He even made it through most of Canada in the process, the lucky bastard. He was travelling up along the eastern seaboard after making it back across from Oregon after doing Alaska. He got into Boston one day, and the ID he was using was red flagged. The business types always catch on a little bit faster than the blue collar guys who use their mobiles to take pictures of their kid’s baseball games, you know.
“The details of all of those people he was ripping off started to combine a bit. He kept latching onto the businessmen as he swung from one state to another. By the time he got up to New York, he was basically using details of one ID or another. Everything he was doing kind of piled together. He continued to travel, but even when he was latching onto smaller bank accounts to fly south again, he didn’t change. By the time he got home, I didn’t know this guy anymore.
“Everything Marc was before was gone. He slipped out of himself. He still moved himself into the lives of other people, but the adventurous personality that carried him around the country in six months was gone. It’s easy to get swept up in the fury of it,” Alex said. He sighed. “How long have you been doing this?”
“Six years.”
“And what’s left of the Alyson that was there before?”
Alyson shook her head. “I don’t get involved with the people I steal from. I’m smart enough to know that I shouldn’t get invested. I play the part for a few days, and leave them as I found them…minus a few hundred bucks.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Where do you get off suggesting that I live these people’s lives, and fuck everything up for them?”
“From the fact that you take their money and stay in hotel rooms, you know…just to start. I’m willing to bet you’ve even broken up a marriage or two in the process.”
“Not my problem,” Alyson snapped.
Alex smiled. “You don’t have to defend yourself to me. But can you honestly tell me that there is anything left of who you were before?”
She paused, staring just past him. “Plenty,” she nodded.
“That’s great,” he nodded. “I hope that you get to be that person again someday.”
“Well, she doesn’t have as many interesting stories to tell,” Alyson said. Her elbows pressed into her knees. “Now fess up; what are you guilty of?”
Alex paused, motioning for Alyson to follow him as he stepped down the hall. She scanned the empty walls, looking for signs of Alex’s personal life; family, friends, girlfriends. “How does eco-terrorism ring in your ears?” he said as he opened one of the bedroom doors.
A pair of fold-out tables sat next to each other in the middle of the room, both covered in dismantled mobiles and parts. In the rear of the room, a desk was covered in a trio of monitors, their cables dropped behind the supports they sat on. A pair of light boards sat along on the desk. The walls were covered in sound proofing panels, and the only light in the room came from lamps on the tables, illuminating small spaces where magnifying lenses were in place over circuit boards. Assortments of tiny antennae, spools of wire, and replacement modules were in boxes and hanging from makeshift shelves and spools on the workspace. The knife in the next room left Alyson’s mind, replaced by the inviting chill of the fluorescent lights casting off of the tiny soldering points on circuit boards and glass mobile screens.
Alex could see that Alyson was impressed, but confused. He smiled, and fished his mobile from his pocket. It was an older device, scratched and chipped on the edges. The screen was smudged. He swiped away the lock screen, and opened an application that filled the screen with black, aside from a four-by-four grid. Little blue dots scurried along the pattern. He held the mobile out for Alyson to see, but kept a tight grip on the device. She counted the dots, but didn’t touch the screen.
/> “This is the Oct,” she said, the point of the program still eluding her.
“Yes.”
“What does this do?”
“Well, I am collaborating with several members of our fine little community who have lived here for a long time, and have suffered a lot of bullshit in the past twelve years. You know what change we went through twelve years ago, right?””
“The Oct construction,” she said.
“Precisely; and the whole city was forced to react. All of the outlying suburbs got swept up in vertical expansion. Half of the city is a fucking ghetto. There were a lot of people who couldn’t afford to take their shops up where the middle and upper class were moving, so they got stuck in the parts of town that get sucked dry for power,” Alex said. “The problem wasn’t that they didn’t have customers. The clientele changed, and they faced a bit more crime than they were used to. One of those guys, Jimmy Quinn, runs a little pizza parlor, and he actually faced trial for killing someone who pulled a shotgun out during a blackout to take advantage of the darkness. He almost lost the business trying to prove it was self-defense.”
“Okay, okay, but what does this have to do with the train and your mobile?” Alyson asked. “I don’t see you being a lawyer through this program.”
“No, sorry, I get a little sidetracked sometimes.”
“That’s fine,” Alyson said. “What do you do?”
He scanned the room with his eyes, and nodded as he sought the right words. “I just turn the lights on where they need to be, and make a few people late for work every now