Ch. 39 – Glass on the Water

The water was shallow near the seawall. It had been built with the storm surges in mind, where the water could rise many feet higher than standard high tide.

Derrick had gripped the oar, the rubber handle of which was barely holding together, and had pushed their canoe away from the ladder with a bit of effort, navigating around the rubble and flotsam that had washed up to the sloping seawall.

Once they had gotten out past the ‘Chunk,’ it was much easier, as the water was deeper, and Derrick gave Xavier a paddle so he wouldn’t be total dead weight. Derrick had sat in the back, though, so he could steer the canoe more easily.

“So where is this crazy bitch holed up?” Xavier asked, as they glided past a rusted school bus.

Derrick craned his neck, looking past blocks of submerged skyscrapers. “You might not be able to see it from behind all those buildings, but it’s the tall one all the way in the back, made all of glass. The one that’s leaning a little bit to the side.” The building was straight ahead and far off in the distance, but some of the gaps between buildings were too dangerous to cross. They would have to take a winding route that snaked through the buildings.

“Alright, stop paddling for a bit,” Derrick said. “I’m going to steer us very carefully.” Each stroke was crucial, as the small stretch of open water right past the chunk was coming to an end. A chill came over the canoe, as they floated into the shadow of the forest of skyscrapers.

Shorter buildings were interspersed among the taller ones, some of them more than halfway submerged in the water.

“Shit, is that—” Xavier started. “That looks like the roof of my old corner store. Damnnn. What’s it doing all the way out here?”

The large green sign with white lettering sat haphazardly on the incomplete wall of bricks that used to be part of a corner store. The sign and the wall were tilted up toward the sky now, supported by some other invisible structure buried beneath the water.

Derrick made a few long strokes to the right. “We’ll go far around it. Don’t know what’s underneath the water there, and I don’t want to punch a hole in the canoe.”

Even though it was technically illegal to be out on the water if you weren’t part of a heritage preservation team, there was no coast guard to enforce the law, just a few drones that flew overhead and recorded structures that were at risk of breaking down further. The thought was that anyone stupid enough to be moving around in the water would either drown or be crushed by the falling piece of some old skyscraper. Or get their ship and cargo stranded and stuck somewhere during low tide. That had happened to Derrick once before.

But the criminals who plied their trade in the ruins had proved them wrong. They ran drugs to and from abandoned old buildings in motorboats, by drone, and even plain old rowboats. It was better to be in a boat, after all, than swimming through water filled with broken glass and rusty nails.

There was a motorboat, streaking across the water in the distance. The criminals had learned the safe paths, and the old city was their city now.

They swerved around the broken corner store facade, and paddled bend after bend, making way for the tall glass building in the distance, which was leaning just a bit. It was a flagship store for an electronics company which had since gone out of business, just like many others which used to operate in Old New York.

Derrick wiped his forehead and twisted in his seat, looking back towards the seawall. They had been paddling non-stop, and the ladder they had come down was a thin line in the distance.

“Damn, would you look at that.” Xavier’s voice came from behind Derrick.

“Huh? What is it?”

The skinny man’s mouth was open in shock. “I ain’t never been out this far on the water before.” Xavier pointed at one of the buildings they had passed.

“Yeah. It’s pretty impressive when you think about it.”

It was a sight you wouldn’t see from the shoreline. Sunlight filtered through the canopy of skyscrapers, striking rows of dark solar grids mounted on the eastern face of the building. Many more buildings beside it also had panels attached, and a mess of power lines running from them: sometimes stretching across the water, running from building to building.

The New Shore City government liked to pretend that the old city was dead, and that society had forgotten about it. But the electricity from the solar panels powered drug dens, smuggling storehouses, and all sorts of other illegal outfits. The old city was alive and well, in a sense. To the city government, however, ‘out of sight’ meant ‘out of mind.’ Tourists wouldn’t be able to see the panels from the city: unless of course, they glanced out their airplane windows at the right time on the flight in.

The tall glass building was just around the next bend.

Most of its glass windows were miraculously intact, although multiple sets of windows and their frames had been removed, leaving only the weight-bearing lattice structure of the building. It created an improvised entrance, slightly above where the mostly-submerged actual entrance was.

Derrick paddled their canoe in through the gap in the windows, and was greeted by the scent of moldy cardboard. It was cold and damp in the ‘lobby’ of the building, which was actually a room full of half-submerged file cabinets. Stacks of cardboard had been laid and lashed to a cluster of cabinets to form a sort of slope you could use to get onto a short steel staircase that led up to the next floor.

“Bring her in nice and steady,” Derrick said, paddling towards the railing of the staircase. He tied the canoe to it, and then pulled a large stroke, bringing the canoe onto the cardboard. The boat smushed against a portion of the cardboard, and released more of the moldy smell into the air.

Derrick and Xavier’s footsteps clanged on the steel staircase as they made their way up. The ‘first floor’ of the flooded building was a mess: broken furniture and scattered detritus all over the place. But that wasn’t where everything actually was.

Hidden behind a stack of crates was a door to the stairwell.

“Watch your step,” Derrick said, remembering just in time that there was a missing floor tile in front of the door. The hazard had been there for at least three months, so either no one had bothered to fix it, or they thought it was funny to hear visitors tripping and slamming against the door when they tried to go up the stairs. It probably also served as an accidental early warning system for cops.

Xavier stepped over the tile, but managed to trip up anyways.

The doorknob was rusty, and Derrick had to give a good yank before the door opened.

Light filtered in from a single window on each flight of the staircase. Compared to the ‘lobby’ that they had arrived in, which had walls made of glass, this area was much darker. Derrick looked around as his eyes adjusted. A single green light shone in the darkness, and it was moving. After a few seconds, Derrick could make out that the light was an LED on a surveillance camera, which was following them as they walked up the staircase.

Derrick waved at it, prompting Xavier to tap him on the shoulder and whisper. “What the fuck is that thing? Why are you waving at it? Does it belong to the cops?”

“Just letting our host know that we’re coming. Don’t worry, the cops don’t bother coming out here unless there’s big trouble.”

When they got to ‘second floor,’ there was another camera waiting for them, right above a door, that seemed to lead into the main body of the building.

Derrick stood in front of the camera, and a kaleidoscopic sequence of colors flashed from an emitter near the camera’s lens. Derrick blinked a bit too late, and was blinded for a few moments before his vision returned.

“What was that?” Xavier whisper-screamed.

“It’s a facial scan to make sure we’re not terrorists or something like that. The proprietor here doesn’t want to attract undue attention by associating with extreme criminals.” Or at least those that don’t have politicians in their pocket.

Xavier stood in front of the camera, and then jerked back as the light flashed in front of his face.

Seemingly satisfied, the camera returned to watching the stair case, and an unlatching sound came from the door.

“Alright, it let us in.”

The knob on the door to the ‘second floor’ was pristine. The door opened with a single click and practically floated on its hinges; Derrick had to hold onto it to prevent it from crashing into the wall.

The door opened into a dusty, but otherwise clean hallway. Some of the floor tiles were missing. They walked down the hallway until they got to another door.

Behind the door were boxes and boxes of electronics, stacked in such a haphazard way that reminded Derrick of Hack Alley’s shop when Tony had just brought him on board. The boxes were crammed from the floor to the ceiling, which was missing quite a few tiles. Wires—originating from the midst of a tangled mess of more wires on the ground—ran up support beams and into the gaps in the ceiling tiles, ostensibly connecting the electronics in the room to other equipment. Bright, fluorescent office lights lit the floor decently well, at least the ones that hadn’t been removed to make space for the ubiquitous wiring.

The largest stack of boxes divided the floor into two halves: one on the left, and a long corridor on the right that stretched into the darkness.

Some of the boxes sat on shelves, and were neatly arranged, implying they had been tidied up since Derrick last came.

“It’s me,” Derrick called out, his voice muffled by the ocean of plastic. “M, are you there?”

There was a mechanical whir behind him, and Derrick whirled around to find a surveillance camera descending from one of the gaps in the ceiling tiling.

“Jesus Christ what the fuck is that doing,” Xavier cried out.

“I know . . . it startled me too,” Derrick said. “Don’t worry. It’s just my friend getting a good look at us.”

After a short while, the camera went back up into a ceiling, and a door unlatched in the corridor on the left.

“Derrick. How are you?” a woman’s voice called out. It was just a touch scratchy.

“Hi Maxine. I’m doing fine,” Derrick said, taking the sight of her in. How much had she changed this time?

Her boots thudded on the carpet, which was surprisingly dry, despite how wet the ‘first floor’ had been. Derrick supposed that Maxine took special care to keep her equipment dry and clean.

She had filled out quite a bit, from the gaunt skeleton she had been in their first meeting. She had full cheeks, and muscled thighs peaked out from under the cargo shorts she always wore, no matter the weather. She looked healthy.

“Thanks for agreeing to meet us on such short notice,” Derrick said.

She shrugged, and closed the butterfly knife she had been playing with. “How could I not, when you dropped me a fat tip like that? Least I can do is hear you out, right?”

“Right, and I really appreciate it.”

Maxine pulled over a swivel chair, which was missing half of its back, and gestured for Derrick to sit. “Okay, so what do you have for me?”

Derrick sat down, and Maxine walked over to a waist high table that held a keyboard and mouse, and had a wall-mounted monitor in front of it.

“It’s a pretty straightforward job,” Derrick said. “I’ve got a client here whose prosthetic, uh, penis, is not working properly—”

“—hey hey hey,” Xavier said, slapping Derrick’s back with his hand. He leaned over and whisper-shouted in Derrick’s ear. “Why are you telling her all about my issue?”

Derrick frowned at Xavier and made a shushing noise, whispering back. “How else do you expect her to help us? She needs to know what the problem is so she can track down the person who hacked your account.”

“Sure, but I don’t know her!” Xavier said.

“I can still hear you guys,” Maxine said, looking up from her computer screen.

“Right, right. Sorry,” Derrick said. He pushed Xavier away. “Anways, I was saying that my client here has a penis mod that’s not fully functional; it can get erect, but becomes non-erect at a certain level of arousal. I did some diagnostics, and narrowed it down to the work of a hacker who stole his login details. His penis mod is linked to some integration with smart home devices, and the hacker was able to gain access that way, most likely.”

“So you want me to find the hacker?” Maxine asked.

“Right, exactly.”

“Sounds fun. You know my rates. Transfer me over the money, and I’ll get started right away”

Derrick opened up his interface and sent the money via the anonymous payment method that Maxine liked to use.

Her face lit up as she saw the money on her end. “That’s enough to get us started at least. . . seems like your client wants to get serious about his account security.”

Derrick glanced at Xavier, who was eyeing Maxine’s thighs, which looked even thicker in the tiny swivel chair, and decided not to comment. “Right. Well, another thing you might need to know. He probably wasn’t the account’s original owner, so the company won’t have any records confirming his ownership and right to hold the account.”

“Sure, well duh. If it was that easy, you wouldn’t be here.” Maxine typed a few more things rapid fire, hit the last key with a flourish, and then stood up and stretched, before turning to Xavier. “Let me have a look at the mod,” she said, pointing at his crotch. “Go on, off with the pants.”

Xavier looked up at Maxine’s eyes, and then looked away, a devilish grin on his face. “Hell, if you’re asking for it, how could I refuse?”

His basketball shorts hit the ground in a second, and he stood there, hips thrust forward, with an embarrassingly confident look on his face.

Maxine made a face, and covered her mouth. “Wow. That’s not normal, is it?” she said, glancing at Derrick.

Xavier looked wounded. “Girl, how you gonna know it’s so bad ‘till you try it?”

Derrick cleared his throat. “Ah . . . well, the installation was handled by a chop shop, so it might have been a bit sloppy. Regardless, that’s not his main complaint. Mechanically, it functions fine. But something in the software’s preventing him from ejaculating.”

“Who made it?”

“Revolute Prosthetics. After talking with one of their engineers, I’m ninety nine percent sure that someone’s got access to his account, and is sending . . . I guess you could call them flaccid instructions via a smart home integration. Better Butler is the smart home integration vendor they’re using for it.”

Maxine tapped her foot on the ground.

“Revolute and Better Butler. Easy.” She pointed at a pair of upside down crates near a row of shelves. “Go ahead and grab a seat. This shouldn’t take long.”