Watch Dogs: Dark Clouds

CHAPTER TEN

Should’ve taken Pearce’s advice…

Wolfe pulled into a random driveway of this suburban neighborhood off the main drag. He killed the engine and got out into the cold night, hearing the sirens keening nearer.

He glanced up at the lamp posts. There were the ctOS cameras. Chances are his phone had scrambled his appearance—but it hadn’t disguised the car they were looking for.

Wolfe hurried down the street, looking for a hackable car. There, a Lexus. That’d work.

He used the proximity sensor when he got near the car, told its doors to unlock. It beeped softly at him and he got in, started it with the phone, backed out, and drove down the street.

But looking in the rearview he saw gumball lights spinning, a few blocks down. Looked like at least three patrol cars. He heard the sirens, then. For sure they’d gotten a report the SUV was stolen. And the ctOS had probably seen him change cars.

He could try and outrun them, but that usually didn’t work out, and then trying to operate the PearcePhone while driving—notoriously, a disastrous thing to do in itself.

He could just pull over, on the theory that they were looking for another vehicle. But they’d have his description and no way they wouldn’t check him out on their way. Especially now that the Chicago cops were hip to guys like Pearce and Wolfe “borrowing” cars, and changing them up.

He turned at the corner, hoping they’d drive by… but two of them screeched to a halt at the intersection…

Wolfe pulled over, hoping to bluff this out somehow.

Then his phone vibrated.

He pulled it out, as the cops turned in the intersection…

Steam started rising from a manhole cover—and suddenly it erupted upward, a water main geyser gushing up out it, knocking the steel cover into the front of the oncoming patrol car. The car ground to a halt, its engine totaled. Another manhole blew… and another water main shot its geyser into the sky, deflecting the second cop car. The street was almost submerged in spurting water, churning with steam and flooding.

Wolfe could just see the outlines of the cops getting out of their cars, baffled, backing away…

Wolfe answered the phone. “That you, Pearce? You blow up those watermains somehow?”

“Yep. Got my system monitoring CPD—and Tranter. He called in your car. Said it was probably stolen… And it is stolen. So… I came out to see what I could do. Watched through the cameras, hacked into the hydraulic public works control.”

“What do I do now?”

“Get out of that car. Your phone’ll blur the cameras—I’ve reset it to do that at the moment. Head into that alley behind the houses. I’m coming to get you…”

Wolfe got out of the SUV, ran to the right, into the broad alley between the houses. Dogs barked at him. The lights suddenly dimmed around him—Pearce had blacked the area out.

A car was turning into the alley up ahead.

Wolfe stepped out of the way and a black Ford Explorer pulled up. The driver’s side window hummed down.

“Get in, ya dumbjack, fast!” Pearce shouted.

Wolfe ran around the Explorer, the door opened and he climbed in.

Pearce started backing down the alley. He knocked over a couple of garbage cans in the dimness, then they were on the cross street, turning, and racing off toward the Southside of town.

“Grampus is dead,” Pearce said, the way another guy would say, “It’s raining again.”

“You killed him?”

“Yeah. I got in and stabbed him. Quieter.”

“Pearce,” Wolfe said, looking out the back window, “I thought Somalia was stressful. But you know what? Getting into your scene, in Chicago—that might be worse.”

“You get used to it,” Pearce said, yawning. “Man I need to go home and lay down.”

Wolfe was sleeping in on the sofa bed when Pearce called—the PC switched on and he heard Pearce’s voice. “Hey, hotshot. Get your ass up.” Pearce’s face was on the PC monitor.

Wolfe swung his feet onto the floor. “You bring coffee?”

“Are you joking?”

“Naturally. What’s up?” Wolfe got up, and boiled some water in the microwave.

“I finally got that encrypted message Grampus sent out decrypted… He says—well here, read it…”

Wolfe hastily dumped some instant coffee in his hot water, swirled it, tasted it, grimaced, drank some more as he went to the PC. He read the decryption Pearce provided in a note window:

“Holy shit,” Wolfe said.

“That’s what I said too, coincidentally,” Pearce told him dryly.

“Maybe millions of people…”

“Give or take a few hundred thousand. These assholes are either completely delusional—or they’re a serious threat.”

“We have to tell Homeland Security about this, man. Connect it up with this ‘Purity’ thing for them…”

“I would. Anonymously. Except that General Van Ness is involved in this and he has deep connections to Homeland Security. And the Dousch Brothers are involved—judging by what you told me when I was driving you back to the safehouse. And the Dousch Brothers have huge influence over media. We need more evidence, not just your word on it. This decryption could be faked up, for all they know. It’s not like the feds are going to listen to you, the guy with a year in the military penitentiary… or me. We also need to know what they’re up to. He doesn’t say how it’s going to happen. And there was no reply to the email. But I have got something else that might bring the whole thing down. If we can get hold of it. My source in DedSec says there’s a big file that could soon be leaked by DedSec, implicating Verrick and Van Ness in the murder of a CIA agent…”

“A woman named Medina?”

“I don’t have the agent’s name yet. But that’s probably it. Because you’re in these files too. Only this isn’t happening right this minute—DedSec is going to lengths to try and confirm that the file’s the real deal.”

“At least they think you’re dead.”

“Seems like they’re conflicted about that. I know the feeling.”

“Who did Grampus send that message to?”

“Haven’t got a name. It’s an email that’s listed as one of about fifty screen names used by Iceberg Investments. But there’s no name associated with it, no matter how I dig—which is freaky in itself. I do know where it was picked up though. A place out in the country… A place belonging to the Blume Corporation. They used it to demonstrate a Blume SmartHouse design.”

“Who’s staying out there?”

“To find out, one of us has to go out there. And the guy who pretends to be my doctor… he did used to be a doctor… he says I’ve gotta to take it easy for a few days. So let’s see. Who does that leave?”

The text startled Seline. Not the chime that announced it—what startled her was the message.

She was sitting in a coffee shop, just finishing breakfast, when the text came in. It made her feel glad she was facing the door.

Seline felt the hair rising on the back of her neck.

She glanced up at the windows of the busy café. They were steamed from coffee pots and a bit grimy. She could see only blurry outlines of people passing on the sidewalk—which looked pretty sinister.

If she read this text right, GlowWorm was saying that whoever had killed her friend Ruth Medina was now looking for Seline Garnera. And they probably weren’t looking for Seline so they could make friends.

There were more delays on DedSec uploading the material. Maybe because they’d gotten word that Seline was being hunted, and GlowWorm too. So they were being extra careful to cover their asses before uploading.

Roger Verrick and General Van Ness would be behind this. They probably wondered if Ruth Medina had shared anything from her files on the rip off of all that money in Somalia. And the set-up of a certain Mick Wolfe.

So they asked themselves, who would it have been?

“Oh, Ruth Medina? She had only one real friend on the ship…”

They were looking to clean house, it seemed, by sweeping away Seline Garnera.

Better get rid of this phone, fast. Apparently she could be traced through it… traced in person.

Seline got up, put on her coat, grabbed her purse, put some money on the table and hurried to the lady’s room. There she smashed her cell phone between the seat and rim of a toilet, as if the hinged seat were a nutcracker. She took the circuit board out, tossed the rest in the trash. She took the circuit board with her, and left the coffee shop, hurrying out into the sunny but cold November morning. She bought a cigarette lighter in a tobacco shop, and went behind the building. She put the phone’s circuit board on the edge of a trash can, and used the lighter to burn it, holding the flame on it till it melted. Then she tossed it in the trashcan.

She still had a way to get in touch with GlowWorm. He’d given her a flashdrive to use for contacting him, in exchange for the one she’d made of the Medina files.

Later. She had to get her luggage and…

No. She had everything she really needed with her. Three hundred dollars in cash, passport, a small pistol—all in her purse. She’d have to abandon that bag, at least for now. She’d buy new clothes. And maybe a wig. Change her appearance as much as she could.

Seline walked quickly out of the alley, and onto the street. Now where?

She just started walking. Random movement seemed best, for now.

Was the organization hinted at in the file really planning to hunt her down, and kill her?

She didn’t have any doubt they were capable of it. The file had made it clear they were murderers, completely ruthless, and highly secretive.

The more she thought about it, the more her stomach tightened.

They might be watching her right now—through ctOS.

She saw a store with wigs in the display window. That’d be a start. She’d need new clothes, after that, and dark glasses…

And then what? She could leave town. But GlowWorm hadn’t recommended that. Maybe for a reason.

And how would she rent a car, or take a plane or train, without the organization being able to trace her?

For now, she would stay put in “the city of big shoulders”. Chicago was a big town. And she just might find some more allies here…