Chapitre 9: Upload data into our brains

Thiago eyed Ivo up and down for a solid minute. His irises spinning rapidly while he scanned him.

"I'm not getting anything," he said, gesturing vaguely.

"But that doesn't mean there's nothing on him," Davi insisted. "Can you do a deep scan, in your room?"

Thiago sucked his full lower lip into his mouth, thinking. He listed to and fro on the balls of his feet. For such an imposing man he moved with extreme grace. All of his movements were meticulous, no matter how inconsequential.

He let go of a breath and ran a hand over the shaved back of his head. "Sure, it's worth a shot, but," he clicked his tongue, "anything that doesn't show on a regular scan is bound to be some heavy shit."

Thiago cast a worried look in Ivo's direction. "I mean, it could self-destruct, or make him turn on us."

Ivo took a step backwards, looking over his shoulder at the closed door.

Could he make a run for it?

They had guns, and he was wearing a fucking shirt as a skirt. His chances of outrunning their bullets weren't looking great.

Alina caught the panic in his eyes and looped an arm over his shoulders. She pulled him to her side in an one-armed hug filled with fake camaraderie. "That won't happen, though, right?" She grinned widely, the pink corners of her lips digging into her full cheeks. "Thiago is a soft touch, he knows what he's doing better than anyone else in the business."

And what business was that?

How was that supposed to reassure Ivo when he had no idea what they did?

He tried to escape from under Alina's arms but she held on tight to his shoulder and started pulling him in the direction of the door Thiago had just come in through.

A heavy hand landed on his other shoulder. "Don't worry kid, if everything goes wrong you probably won't feel anything before exploding into a million bits."

Great, what a fucking relief.

---

Thiago's room was dominated by a rickety metal desk burdened with mismatched screens, holographic and digital, and several buzzing terminals whose functions Ivo could only guess at. All kinds of mechanical tools were laid out orderly on the desk's remaining free space. Their shining, sharp appendages drew the eye, and Ivo swallowed drily.

There wasn't much free space in the cramped room. Besides the desk, a narrow bed with a thin mattress piled with blankets and mismatched pillows took up whatever was left.

Two swivel chairs were squeezed together in front of the buzzing setup of cables and monitors.

"Take a seat," Thiago said sitting down carefully, and hooking a foot around the leg of the chair in front of him and rolling it forward.

Ivo chanced one last longing look at the bedroom's closed door.

He sat down with a dejected sigh.

Thiago laughed at his forlorn expression. "Relax, kid, I'm not going to hurt you."

He turned towards his work desk and started fiddling with his gear, turning on machines and looking up at the screens in concentration. Ivo looked up at the moving figures, and schematics without understanding what he was looking at, but Thiago kept making adjustments as he saw fit.

Finally, he had everything he needed ready.

"Scoot here, kid," Thiago said, gesturing for Ivo to come forward.

Gingerly, he dragged his feet across the tile floor, making the chair's wheels move forward. Thiago pushed the chair sideways, and inspected the side of Ivo's neck carefully. His hands were gentle as they ran through Ivo's scalp, from his ear towards the back of his neck.

"Ah! Found it." Thiago's fingers slid against something in his scalp that made Ivo shudder.

His hands flew up protectively to his head. "What is that?" he asked.

Thiago rolled himself closer to the desk and started tapping away at his computer. "That's a chip port." He ran his fingers up above his own ear, where the shaved scalp became neat, tightly woven braids. He parted his hair to show Ivo a tiny chrome slot embedded into his skin.

"We all have them," Alina said, trying to reassure Ivo after noticing the panic in his eyes.

Ivo ran his hands over the tiny slot in his skull, feeling that dizzy wrongness once again. "What are they for?"

Davi peeled himself away from the wall and walked over towards the desk. "To upload data into our brains, what else?"

Alina nodded along. "Translation software, blueprints, maps, viruses, hacks," she grinned, "all kinds of useful shit."

Thiago snorted. "We can do it over the cloud too, but only when we're using a secure network," he patted a shoddy jumble of cables stacked on top of two blinking boxes, "like here. Most places it's better to go analog, that's what the ports are for. You slot a chip in there and it downloads the software into your system."

He turned to Ivo with a cable in hand which looked like it was just the right size to fit into his chip port. "Of course, first we need to know what system you're operating with."

Ivo eyed the business end of the cable with apprehension. "Is it supposed to feel like anything? Because I don't know how any of that would even be downloaded into me. How would I see a map?"

"See, that is curious, because usually the mainframe is only useful if you have these," he dug a finger into his eye socket, making the eye roll up in its orbit and flash Ivo the same blue barcode he'd seen on Alina's eyes. "But your eyes are organic."

Davi squatted in front of Ivo's chair and looked up into his eyes. Whiskey coloured eyes, as Ivo remembered from the one time he had seen his own reflection.

"Why would you get a mainframe chip into your brain, but no optics to read it with?" Davi asked, directing a question not at Ivo but something beyond his eyes.

Or someone.

Ivo swallowed drily. "What if the decision wasn't mine?"