Collateral

Ellie is sitting in the hospital lobby. Normally her Mom would be already released from the sterile room, but the hospital seemed to be overstaffed. She really doesn’t like this, waiting in her private waiting room, being alone with her thoughts.

Ellie sighs. What was taking them so long? Was the hospital just being slow, and overworked, or was her Mom doing badly and did the hospital not tell her?

Ellie bites her nails, the stress is killing her. She has to know.

She takes out her phone and connects it to the hospital network. The security is laughable, as expected. Within a minute, Ellie has access to the digital charts. She scrolls through the list trying to find her Mom, but then her eye falls on someone else.

John Sterling.

She hasn’t been able to find anything about the man who hacked her yesterday. He kept all his digital traces very clean. Or maybe he manually deleted it. Doesn’t matter. The person was a patient here. This might be Ellie’s sole opportunity to find the hacker who stole her files.

She opens his chart and sees it is almost empty. Damnit. No medical history, no personal data, just one field in his file, and a prescription for immunosuppressants.

The prescription has a single attachment, written by the hospital dean.

“Even tho the patient has no official records, I can attest that the patient requires immunosuppressants, and is a well-paying customer. Medication has to be supplied as indicated without asking questions.”

Ellie looks at her own metal hand. So the hacker was a cyborg, just like her. Ellie isn’t surprised. He was probably decked out with lots of tech, like brain interfaces. That kind of tech needs lots of immunosuppressants, otherwise, the patient’s immune system attacks and disables the implants.

If the hacker really had implants, he could operate way faster than her. It would be impossible for Ellie to keep up, given she actually had to type commands into her phone and he could just, think things and they would happen. Unless.

Ellie replaces the prescription with sugar pills and edits the note.

“Patient is a mentally ill drug seeker. For the patient’s safety, do not provide immunosuppressants. Instead, provide a placebo. Do not disclose this to the patient, he might turn violent.”

Ellie smiles. If everything goes right, the next time the hacker refills his prescription, he will receive sugar pills. This should be in a month or so. This will fry his cyberdeck or whatever implants he has. He wouldn’t be able to cover his tracks while his cyber ware is being fixed.

Ellie sighs. She should wait a month until the hacker has picked up the medication. Then she will check again. Not a perfect plan, but it is the best she has.

She shuts down her phone as a doctor comes in.

“Are you Ellie?” he asks.

“That is me.”

“Your Mom is out of quarantine, you can come and visit her now.”

Ellie’s Mom is sitting on her bed. The new cyber eye is big and bulky, it scares Ellie a bit. Mom smiles when she sees Ellie enter.

“Hi Mom,” Ellie says. “Did you miss me?”

“Of course, I missed you, little Angel. I love you.” She says.

“I love you too, Mom.”

Ellie runs over to her Mom and hugs her tight. She cries. “I really thought I was gonna lose you, Mom. I was so scared.”

Her Mom escapes from her embrace and wipes away Ellie’s tears.

“Hey, little angel, don’t cry. I am ok. I am here for you. I will never leave you, I promise.”

Ellie goes to sit on the end of the hospital bed. “You can’t promise me that, Mom. Your job is really dangerous, and if something goes wrong, you might die. I worry about you every day.”

Mom sighs and laughs. “Don’t worry about me, Ellie. You are not gonna get rid of me that easily.”

Ellie thinks for a bit. Should she tell her Mom about Mr Johnson gathering information about her? How people might betray her. She would be very mad. Mom didn’t want Ellie to put herself in any form of danger, and if Mom found out she went to investigate herself, Mom would probably ground her. Then again, was that more important than her safety? No, Mom needed to know.

Then again, what would Mom do with this information? Go to the hotel or the hacker guns blazing? What if her Mom got killed in the process? No, it was better if she didn’t tell her. It would keep both of them safe.

October 2077