Escapology (2 page)

She’s all he’s got.

Having zero friends is fine when you’re coasting on glory, not so fine when all that goes away and you need help. These past months, chasing basic survival, he’s slid right down the Fail food chain to the slime at the bottom of the pond. Been dicked on flim, moved from shitty apartment, to shittier, to cage in an attempt to stay off the streets, and escaped brain-locked servitude by the skin of his teeth at one particularly dodgy job—bad luck following bad.

Basically put, he’s experienced the steep learning curve he initially avoided, the curve most other Fails walk after those red letters flash up, condemning them to self-subsistence in a world that does its level best to make such magic as difficult as possible. You have to be special, a J-Hack, or affiliated to a crime lord, and if you’re not one of those then you’re meat. That’s what Shock is now. Meat. And he’s a Haunt. Top 0.5 % too. In other words, very fucking special.

He stumbles headlong into a tight-knit group of salarymen, who jeer and shout him away, reeling down rain-smeared concrete. Yeah. Look at how special he is, still so screwed from the virad job he can hardly put one foot in front of the other.

His drive blips again.

Do I numb my arse for a no-show or what?

Shock groans, the truly repugnant gut-warping anxiety of hearing Mim’s voice is worse than waking in a Slip-sling, naked and bristling with grubby tubes too wide for the orifices they’re crammed in to. He wants to do anything except turn up, but there’s that thing about choice and city hubs in orbit. Pulling his jacket tight, Shock turns unsteadily toward the top end of Plaza, the world spinning around his queasy skull like cartoon bluebirds.

* * *

There are many places to party on Foon Gung’s claustrophobic sprawl but Plaza’s the only one bright enough to be seen from the hubs, the cities smugly orbiting the boundary to endless space. Plaza’s high-end is a migraine-provoking frenzy; a gaudy parade of VIP clubs, Slip joints, art houses and karaoke bars. Despite the money practically oozing from the cracks in the sidewalk these multifarious amusements look cheap stacked side by side and swaddled in neon and fairy lights spangled as a K-rock star’s thong.

This scene is as far from Shock’s idea of a good time as it’s possible to get, but he’s not surprised Mim’s blipped to meet him here. She’s a freaking magpie, and always out for maximum flim expenditure. Doubtless she’s not numbing her arse much, probably got a gaggle of lanky Biz-Cad creeps orbiting her horizons, dazzled by the glare of her headlights.

Reluctantly jacking her IM, Shock hooks her signal, tracing it to one of the cheesiest karaoke joints on Plaza: Keen Machine.

“Fucking jim goddamn dandy,” he sneers, shielding his eyes from the high-intensity blast of illumination that comprizes the entrance.

Concentrating hard to remain steady on his feet, he rolls in past the muscle, a gaggle of uber-pumped gorks in suits, their necks so thick they look like truncated thighs, and heads for the bar. There’s a skinny little short-arse with neon fangs serving the whole thirty meters of polished copper by herself, clacking to and fro on knife-blade heels and snarling at everyone as she juggles glasses and snatches flim.

All out of sympathy, his head still basically tofu beneath the straggly S bump-sheen and Mim-xiety, he orders an apple juice, no ice, with two shots of pure green caffeine for himself and a voddie lime slim for Mim and skulks off to hunt her down in the shadowy recesses.

Predictably, he finds her holding court amongst a gaggle of wide-eyed Frat boys from the Biz-Cad, a different shade of learning than the academies, for hI-Qs and the wealthy. These are the latter, all spending daddy’s money and trying to look smart in clothes so new they still smell of the print factory; a clean, sharp scent not unlike bleach.

Mim’s in her usual uniform, a bodysuit fitted close as second skin in holographic material, blending her into the corner like a mirage; the only signs of her existence an inky mass of iridescent black hair and those crazy mirrored eyes. Mim’s a chameleon—you can’t see her, only her surroundings and yourself, reflected back at you into infinity.

That’s Mim’s problem. She lives her role. 24/7 365 in Imp-mode. Consequently she’s only ever been any use as a reflection. Expecting to find a person somewhere in those vague distorted echoes is a sure-fire route to ending up disappointed. At least he did. Disappointed and sick to the core, his heart aching, just like it is now. He only has to look at her to feel wrecked. She’s a wall he keeps crashing into.

He still remembers the first time he saw her. In Tech. She’d transferred in from Cad after a Tech-skills test, was perched like a crow in the window of his lecture hall on the seventeenth floor, smoking a long, purple cigarette. Psy. Illegal as hell. She wore a flimsy, red-plastic playsuit and shades, had her feet rammed into matching bladers, stack-heel shoes with a mag-strip for speeding along mono lines, and he fell for her catastrophically.

Her distant grin and cold mirror eyes gave him shivers he mistook for attraction, and that off-hand way she has drove him out of his mind, full-on crazy as a primo high. He took to following her like a shadow, hanging in her wake, nebulous as a cloud of smoke and half as noticeable. Sometimes he thinks she only noticed him by accident, out of the corner of her eye, like seeing a ghost. Appropriate. It makes him laugh nowadays. But only now and then.

It took him a year to persuade her to fuck him, another for her to scheme a way to get rid of him. By that time they’d moved in together and everyone spoke their name in one long breathless mouthful, like they were conjoined twins in a freak show. What a fucking waste of two years, and he doesn’t plead the stupidity of youth about any of it. He’s forgotten how to be that kind to himself.

Unable to muster up a shout, Shock stands at her table and stares, waiting until she notices him, trying to ignore how much like the old days it is. This is his choice, not hers—and it’s all business. There’s nothing personal in it. When she clocks him, her headlights flare, and she throws down a serious grin, like a challenge.

“Shocking boy, long time no spy.” She makes shooing gestures with tiny hands tipped with nails like talons. She-bird. Bird of prey. “Skeddadle, dickheads, my boy is here. We have business.”

“I’m not your boy,” he says with infinitely more calm than he feels, sliding in beside her and slamming her drink down next to a half-empty flute of what looks like liquid purple glitter and smells bad as candy-coated burnt rubber. “What’s the job?”

“What, no time to reminisce?”

She tries for a hurt tone, but it falls light years short. Sounds like she’s asking a bug she’s got under a magnifying glass if the sun burns yet. The fact she still gets to him as easily as when he thought they were a going concern makes him despise her even more. Or maybe he just despises himself?

He should quit the habit of her. Quit this vicious cycle, a viscous cycle, clinging to him like she still does, out of convenience, and he lets her. More fool him. He takes a deep breath, feeling like he’s sucking the whole club down into his lungs.

“Job, Mim, or I’m out.”

Her teeth flash, blinding, making him dizzy.

“Tetchy,” she drawls, and he knows that she’s feeling his discomfort and loving it. Fuck but he hates her. “I need a bullseye, close as dammit to my stats as you can hit. Two K flim.”

Mim is an ID sniper, an info clone, an Imp. She hunts, copies, and temporarily replaces for the purposes of theft. Pretty good at hacking bullseyes on a basic level, Mim’s proficiency dive-bombs to below useless with any kind of VA, Virtual Armament.

Her current fuck, Johnny Sez, an L-plates hack, can only crack up to level 6. For anything above that, she has Shock, her reluctant hacker on call. It’s a crap job, and far too intermittent, but it’s flim and really he’s in no position to be picky. He wishes he were. Whenever he works for Mim, she always wants delivery in person. Maximising his discomfort is one of her favourite pastimes.

“I need the company you expect me to phish in before I Y or N.”

“Olbax Corp.”

Olbax. Great. Could be worse though. Could be Paraderm.

“That’s a pretty mean amount of VA for Two K. Two K barely even covers my fucking rent.”

“Take it or leave it, sport. Not running a charity here. Or maybe you don’t think you need it?” She gives him the sly look, up and down. “I’m guessing that’s why you’re looking so swell. Corpse-chic suits you.”

Shock tries not to react, it costs him way too much dignity and temporary control of an eyelid.

“Fine.”

She reaches out and pats his hand.

“Good Shocking Boy. Info in your IM as we speak.”

Sliding out of the booth, the back of his hand tingling like it’s been stung, he makes for the Risi District and enough alcohol to drown a land ship the size of the Gung. Maybe this time it’ll be enough to drown out the ugly mix of hate and need he gets from too close proximity to her.

He makes a concerted effort to forget about the job before he’s even halfway there. At some point his IM will blip and Mim will squeak a reminder. Until then, fuck her, fuck everything. All he wants to do is drown.

Cleaners should never have to run, they stalk and sneak and snatch their prey when least expected; anything else constitutes a heinous insult to their skills. Ducking under the corner of a brightly striped awning, Amiga slams through the crowd in pursuit of the wiry, wired-up Streek who until about thirty seconds ago had no clue about her presence at his back.

Goddamn kimchi merchant chose literally the worst moment ever to howl in her ear: “
Beautiful Kimchi, just like halmeoni makes it—super cheap!
” Before she had time to put a dart through that loudmouth’s neck, her target had turned, spotted her and was away like a streak—haha—of piss.

If she didn’t fucking adore kimchi she’d boycott it from her diet to make a point. Maybe she’ll go back to the market and buy from the seller three stalls down. Yeah. That’ll feel
good
. Probably a better option than killing the guy who busted her, and definitely less harmful to her karma. Although if it’s karma she’s got to be worried about then she’s already royally screwed.

Bursting out from between the last row of stalls in the market place, she finds herself in the middle of a tight-knit group of Hindi ladies in jewel-bright saris. They shriek, slap at her like she’s a bug. With their multitudes of rings, it’s like being pelted with tiny, stinging stones. No, this is not at all humiliating.

“Ow, come
on
!”

Charging out of their reach and down the street, she spots the skinny little shitbag clambering up a fire escape along another alley to her left.

“Fast,” she murmurs, half impressed, and sets off after him, sweating like a five-hundred-pound rikishi in a sauna. This jumpsuit works for blading, especially way up on the mono where it gets super cold, but it does not work for a frantic pursuit down tiny, stinking overcrowded alleys, and up ramshackle fire escapes. At least she changed out of her bladers. Small mercies.

Amiga reaches the top in time to witness his wild leap to the next roof. As he lands, the skinny little shitbag looks back and has the audacity to laugh. Unsurprising. Streeks are fucking crazy, and usually fucked up. They’re Cad students, socially engineered within a stifling constriction of class schedules, minimal flim, and claustrophobic Pod hotels for maximum lunacy in order to thin the herd before graduation.

Around seventy percent of these fuckers don’t live to sit their Psych Eval—all the better to keep the competition for Corp roles to a manageable minimum. Doesn’t mean she’s not going to beat that smile off his idiotic rat face when she catches him, but it adds a certain pathos to the situation.

He laughs again as he takes off sprinting across the roof, that crazed Streek cackle, and an aggressive need to pop a dart in his idiotic skull wrestles its way into her fingers. Growling, she backs up and takes a running leap, digging for self control. Popping his head like a pus-filled cyst would be satisfying in the short term, but she’s on strict instructions. Her delightfully violent and unforgiving boss, Twist, wants this little fucker alive. Failure to meet this condition would mean a very swift change of conditions for her. The Cleaner would be Cleaned. Thoroughly. Twist always makes a particular example of favourites.

And there’s a thought she very much wishes not to be having.

She follows her irritating target around the corner of a cooling unit and runs headlong into an unexpected reason for his reckless amusement. Streeks. About a dozen of them. She slides to a halt, considering. They smile at her. Like vultures with mouths and teeth. Thing is, she’s not carrion. She is in fact the very furthest thing from that, and this is the single advantage of being Twist’s favourite. Amiga smiles back.

“I don’t want to spoil your fun,” she says gently. “All I’m here for is that little rat.” She points at said rat. “No one else has to get hurt today.”

Giggling, the Streeks fan out. Of course they’re not going to listen. Of course they want to play. Why wouldn’t they? This is what they’re made to do. So be it. They can see what she’s made to do. Amiga relaxes. Taking that as a cue, they come at her hooting and cackling, switchblades and shoge flicking into their hands, into the air.

Amiga breathes in deep as the first one nears, spinning his shoge a trifle wide but with definite skill. Stepping under the chain, she slams her palm into his face, full force. His head flies back, a high spray of blood rising above it, bright as a mohican.

Snatching the front of his jacket to hold him steady, she scoops his arm into hers and spins him, applying pressure until the joint pops out. He screams, cut off to gurgles as she plucks the shoge from limp fingers and slits his throat.

Stunned by her speed, too stoned to react with anything like the same, the others howl at her. But she’s calm, ready, spinning the shoge in skilful arcs and already moving. Sends it whipping out into their flesh before they can find a response beyond rage, cutting gaping holes in arms and thighs, in the taut flesh of their bellies.