Identity

By Abigail Falanga

She turns as I approach. Girl in a tan hoodie with wisps of long blond hair. The way her hood is up, I assume she’s wearing an IdentMask, and I’m right. Black haze conceals her face. Her eyes are red, glowing Xs, and her mouth a sewn-shut line. It’s a cheap, basic mask, unlike the sophisticated and fully animated face I wear clipped to my hat, and it’s freaking me out a little.

Clients often wear IdentMasks. This kind of transaction makes them uncomfortable; it’s something they’d rather not be recognized doing.

Just like they often pick strange places to meet. Maybe it has some meaning for them. Usually, it’s just another way to hide who they really are.

Like here, by the sea. Out in the middle of nowhere near a lonely stretch of highway with few buildings in sight. Garbage and graffiti everywhere, so it’s not even pretty—except for the gray-blue ocean lapping fifty feet below against the rocks.

A place I haven’t thought about in a while.

Snow, drifting down through headlights. Not enough to be dangerous, though, with luck, that’s what they’ll put the accident down to.

Shake it off. Don’t hang on to these things. Just let them be, and focus on what’s happening now…

The girl is very still, not shifting her weight, hands slightly clenched. Strange. They often move around a lot, nervous.

She doesn’t say anything, so I get straight to business. “So, what’s this job?”

She paid ten grand up front in cryptocurrency. Clearly, this is a big commission and I’m not interested in waiting around before doing it.

“I want someone killed.” The girl speaks for the first time, a low, musical voice humming with something almost familiar.

“Okay.” Assassination isn’t usual for me, but I can go there. “Who?”

“Why,” she says. “Ask why, not who.”

“Okay.” Fine, I’ll play along. She’s paying the bills, after all. “Why?”

“A girl was killed here a year ago. Mary.” She points at the word scrawled in black spray paint on a boulder.

“And you want her killer taken care of? Can do. But I’ll need more details.”

She nods slowly. “She was happy, loved her family. Didn’t deserve to die. She was driving home from work. Her car was hacked and went over the sea wall.”

That’s how I would’ve done it. Find the target’s weakness—predictable or unreliable transport, shoddy firewall—plant a virus or tell the system it has a flaw somewhere, then get out of there. Clean, simple, as hands-off as possible.

But hit jobs are different. You have to get their online persona and go after that.

A persona integrates the registered IdentMask with their online accounts and smart tech. It’s the best way to protect a user identity. Crafted, then dropped if necessary, to allow personal reputation, credit rating, and life to remain unaffected. Or so they say.

But a persona can be hacked. Like any other system, I can find my way in through chinks in the code. And… I don’t have to lift the mask and see the person inside. Quick and clean.

“I want the one who killed her.” The girl’s voice has gone cold—the kind of cold that burns. “I want to make him pay.”

Shivers race down my spine for some reason I don’t bother wondering about. “Okay, sure. Give me some more details on how she died, and I can back-trace to find the hacker.”

“She was driving a 2025 silver Nemesis, registration number 31785M. 8:15 p.m. on January sixth.”

“Got it. Go on.”

“The steering system went out.”

“That’s traceable. Next?”

“She was singing along to her favorite Beatles song.”

Good choice, I thought, as I saw the track she’d selected from Streaming. It was just a blip on my screen as I changed the setting on the steering column to “lock.” The steering algorithm was the easiest to hack on these Nemesis models…

“Uh…” I clear my throat, shaking off the memory of that night when I’d sat in my ScreenPit where it was warm so I didn’t have to imagine the cold. “Go on.”

“Light from a streetlamp fell through the windscreen just before it happened.”

I saw her face through the dash cam. She was very pretty. Joy lit her face more than the light. Strawberry-red lipstick…

“You didn’t even pause,” she goes on. “Just fingered that chewed-up goatee and hit Enter.”

My stomach drops and I stop making notes on my ArmScreen to stare at her, trying to get some hint, trying to understand who she is. Another hacker? But, why…?

She speaks now in a voice so low that the clatter-crash of waves almost drowns it. “Still haven’t gotten rid of the goatee, I see. It’s caught the yogurt you had for breakfast.”

How—? She can’t possibly see my face! “Who the hell are you?” I waver between starting a virtual attack at her IdentMask or a physical attack. “What are you playing at?”

She’s a liar. She couldn’t possibly know. She still makes no move.

She’s just provoking me.

My hands are shaking. I know, I don’t know how, but I know that she’s there because I killed Mary.

And I make up my mind.

I jump forward, raking off her hood to see—

Nothing.

Black haze. No face. No head.

“What is this?” I choke at something beyond comprehension.

“Revenge,” she says, and dissolves so that nothing is between me and the sea wall edge.

Can you guess which song from the 1970's inspired this story? Share in the comments!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Abigail Falanga may be found in New Mexico creating magic in many ways – with fabric, food, paper, music, and especially with words! She’s loved fantasy ever since playing out epic adventures of swords, fairies, and monsters with her siblings, and loved sci-fi since her dad’s stories around the dinner table. Besides sharing mad little stories on Havok, she is busily trying to launch approximately five hundred novels into the world. Some of them are even finished!

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