Sitting on my couch, I take a solid minute, eyes closed and concentrating on deep breathing. And running through the chain of logic again.

Well, the first thing they teach us at the academy is not to panic. And after all, it's just a guess. There are hundreds of reasons someone might steal medical grade nanos. Most of them are bad, but body-jacking is a special kind of evil. It's worse than kidnapping and identity theft combined. It's invasive, disempowering, dehumanizing. It's combines the worst aspects of mind-rape with enslavement. In some ways, it's worse than being eaten alive. Because you live through it and have to deal with the consequences.

Someone puppeteering your body while you're trapped inside? Maybe unconscious, but maybe aware? I shiver. I can't even watch those kinds of horror holos.

I lay my hands flat and take a deep breath, exhaling slowly. Chill, Mel. Someone would have to be heavily augmented for to lose motor-control. More than me. Definitely requires dexterity mods or nerve-bypasses or the like. At that level, it's... what? I pull up some actuarial tables in my overlay. Like four percent of the population? Less?

And you couldn't get away with it for long. It would require constant attention to maintain. And it's a trick you can only play once; if the victim gets control back, they'll shut down their implants.

But fuck, I don't want this trick being played on my station.

Huh. My station. When did that happen?

Alright, take it one step at a time. Air and water systems have sensors and filters. Nobody is spiking the vents or pipes. Food? Maybe, but most food this far out is processed and pre-packed. Tamper-proof seals and such.

Ok, then... any hydroponics on the station? Maybe something like local-brewed alcohol? There can only be a few-

Wait. If I wanted to spike someone with corrupted medical nanites, and keep them from realizing...

I would want them to believe they are legit medical nanos. Medical?

Ok, now is the point where I ping my partner and pull him in.

***

The Sergeant doesn’t seem to be his usual chipper self on hearing my theory.

I hear him sigh and imagine his perpetual smile has dimmed a little. “Ok, El Tee, someone wanting to interfere with implants or their signals is a good guess. But body-jacking is a bit outside the orbit. We see maybe two or three cases like that in a year across all the Dark District stations combined."

"That we know about," I point out, waffling my hand.

The Sergeant does chuckle at that. "Point taken. But Ursa Miner Station is a hub for mining and transportation companies. If someone is jacking implant signals, it’s more likely to be corporate espionage. Sophisticated spyware to circumvent patents, or undercut prices. Or even pure, flat sabotage; just a kill-signal to brick the right executive's implants.”

I run my fingers through my hair, blowing out a breath. Pretty wide field to cover. ”Well, whichever way, people are vulnerable,” I mutter.

He breathes deeply and clicks his tongue. ”Yeah, as one of the vulnerable augments, I appreciate that. But assuming you could code well enough to interfere with a victims implants, how would they even disperse them? You’re not saying the medical staff are involved?” His tone is flat. Of course he's skeptical; he probably knows the folks in medical.

"Probably not," I admit. "If they were, they would have legit access to the nanos to begin with. No need to steal them. But I don't think someone's just data-scraping. It's more than spyware; it's a lot of effort and risk. Stealing nanos and injecting a victim just to get some schematics or price lists? It doesn't hold together," I point out.

The Sergeant chuckles. "I don't see what else they could do. Besides, do you know how many different manufacturers and programming languages there are for implants? There's no one-size fits all macro you could load some nanos with. Have you ever considered that the person might just be trying to destroy and crash augments? I mean, no need to program a suite of master-control macros if you can brick the competition," he suggests.

I blink at that. Hmmm. "So, what, a universal command?"

"Sure. It would have to be pretty simple. Shut down, suspend, or reset. Maybe reboot, or-"

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Or disengage malware filters," I suggest.

"But then... huh..." The Sergeant trails off, silent.

"Yes? What, Brent?" I prod.

"I mean, yeah, that could work. Just shut down the malware filters and let traditional methods do the heavy lifting," he says softly. He's not laughing anymore.

I understand why. Being exposed to every nasty digital bug out there? Terrifying thought. My mind races. "But then... they have to strike with malware after they know the victim is compromised by the nanos," I point out.

Brent grunts. "It's too situational. We're missing something," he mutters.

I tap my foot. Nothing. "Think we should pull someone else in on this case? Maybe a synth?" Might be helpful to have someone who thinks in code looking at this.

"I think you should tell me about you and Sparrow," he says levelly.

"I... what?" My heart begins pounding in my chest. "What makes you think there's anything to tell?" I ask, swallowing hard.

Now he chuckles. "Did you go back to her ship? Or your quarters?"

A bead of sweat rolls down my neck. "Sergeant! Do I have to pull rank?" I snap.

There's silence for a long, long moment, then a sigh. "Really El Tee? That's how you want to play it?"

I take a deep breath. I take several more. "I'm... sorry. Really," I say, rubbing my temple. "The fact is... I've sort of had a turbulent romantic life, and I'm trying not to..."

"... fuck everything up?" He offers. Oof. You read me like a book, Sarge. Stop it.

I hold my head in my hands and grunt. "I'm not the touchy-feely, 'let's-talk-about-our-feelings' type," I admit, leaning back in the couch and resting my head against the bulkhead.

"No? Really El Tee? I couldn't have guessed," he laughs.

"Go suck hard vacuum," I say without venom. I wait a few seconds. "I dunno... I like her. I don't know where it's going, but I think I want to find out."

He waits for a bit. "That all?" He's not letting me off the hook.

I grit my teeth. "Does it have to be more than that?"

I hear him click his tongue. "If you say so. But, El Tee, even that might trip you up."

My hackles rise, and I find myself breathing faster. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying be careful. This is a small station; everyone lives in each other's laps. it's hard to be discrete," he adds.

Silence reigns for a moment.

"And the nanos?" I ask, moving on.

"All we have is supposition and hypothesis. If we can verify any of it, I say move forward. If you don't mind, I'll look into the medical side. I think it's a red herring, but I'll know if anyone is acting hinky better than you. In the meantime, just collate data," he suggests.

I huff, but another ping comes through just then. Ah, forensics; some results back on the toll-station botnet? Or on Lemming?

"I'll collage for now, but got to go. It's Rabi, hopefully with something helpful on the Lemming case," I say, trying not to sound relieved.

"Green across the board, El Tee. Check in if you have more," he adds before it cuts out. Saved by the sleepless manic wirehead.

When I open the link to Rabi, I gasp out loud. The baud rate is maxed out on her end, waaaay higher than I expected. I tamp it down on my end.

Rabi talks in a quick stream, babbling faster than I can follow as I struggle to tune the channel.

"Captain, dial it back, please," I plead.

"Yes yes, Sorry, I'm overclocked. I've dissected the data you sent me, from the Indy AI, alias 'Lemming'. The random code in his analyses are memory dumps; he's probably vomiting bad code periodically."

I struggle to keep up. "They're... what?"

"Lemming's RAM was overflowing. He was running thousands of simultaneous subroutines from about eight hundred or so various unrelated programs, most of them ads and spam."

I takes me a second to frame that. "...How? Wouldn't he crash?"

"Yes yes! He was crashing. I'm guessing he went through repeating cycles of crashing and resetting, constantly trying to purge RAM. His analyses are junk because it was essentially 'stream-of-consciousness' gibberish," she spits out in a rush.

I dunno, Captain, you're not much better. I scratch my head. "So, what, he was... the synth equivalent of babbling incoherently in the gutter?"

"Yes yes! And I'm guessing he still is," she chirps. I imagine her bouncing in her seat.

"Well, anything you can tell me about the malware that's infecting him?" I ask. Any leads, really.

"I could write you dissertation on the number of bloatware and spyware and malicious programs he's running, but I don't believe they're the problem. I'd guess these are all secondary infections," she babbles, and I hear a squeaking. Her chair, probably.

But she's saying... "You're kidding? It's a miracle this synth was operating while this loaded with worms and viruses. You're saying they're a symptom of something worse?"

"None of the spamcode or trojans he was carrying would cause this type of problem. In fact, there's got nothing in the security database that would cause behavior quite like this," she adds. She sounds almost chipper.

My skin crawls at that. Fuck. There are always risks for synths or heavy augments. You get lots of benefits, but there are vulnerabilities. The ability to contract a whole new class of deadly digital illness. Filters and firewalls and antiseptic code helps, but black-hats are always coding new nasties. And some digital-life sort of 'evolves' on its own. A program gets corrupted, goes rogue, makes copies of itself... life, uh, finds a way.

"Well, if it's something new, then it just jumped up on my priority list," I admit.

"Yes yes, please. We need to find, quarantine, examine Lemming right away. Or his body," she squeaks.

You're all heart. But she's right. "Got it. I'll ping you when I have an update," I sigh, shaking my head. At least I'll have an update for Cartwright tomorrow.

Hopefully, we won't have a pandemic on our hands as well. Or someone body-jacking augments with stolen nanos. How the hell did the stakes get this high this fast?

Just then, I get an alert in silver, with a Code Enforcement flag. Wait, this flag... the eyebot in the dock! Someone is trying to hack it. Haha, well, something breaks my way!

"Got to go, Captain, I got some off-grid shuttle racers to take in," I say, grinning.

And to think, I thought working in the sticks would be dull!