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Syd stared at the words.

The aid station.

Maybe he really was sick. His fingers went to the birthmark behind his ear again. It sat on that lump of bone where his ear met his skull and he found the thumping sound calming.

He didn’t feel sick. He felt fine. Other than the fear of slow, painful death from some undiagnosed disease, he felt fine.

Report immediately to the school aid station
flashed again in front of him. This time he noticed the logo of the Xelon Corporation in the hologram. He reached up and swiped the projection out of the air.

This wasn’t about his health. This was about his patron.

What had the brat done this time?

[3]

“YOU’RE LATE, MR. CARTON.” Mr. Thompson’s face glowered from the holo projected on top of the bot at the front of the classroom.

“I . . . uh . . .” Syd stared up at it as it rolled toward him. He swayed on his feet and rubbed his arm where the bot at the aid station had shoved a needle in. He shuddered at the memory. He really hated needles.

“
I, uh
is hardly an excuse,” Mr. Thompson snapped. “Do you expect the entire district to wait for you?”

“No, sir,” Syd muttered, knowing that his words were being broadcast to four other classrooms across the Lower City at the same time. There were about fifty kids in each one, which meant he was being called out in front of two hundred people. So much for keeping his head down.

“I was at the aid station. I had to give blood.”

“So we are all to be punished for
your
obligations?” Mr. Thompson demanded.

“No, sir.” Syd wobbled. He worried he was going to pass out. He was having trouble focusing. They’d taken a lot of blood.

The aid station bot hadn’t explained
why
he had to give blood, just that he did or he would be in violation of his debt contract. The blood was
required
of him.

That was the only answer he could get, but it was from an official Xelon datastream, so he had to obey. The aid station bot also had EMD capabilities. He’d prefer a simple blood donation to an EMD blast any day.

So he’d closed his eyes, looked away as the needle went in, as his blood flowed through a tube into the medical bot. He’d heard the term “blood debt,” but he’d never had to donate blood to his patron before. He always thought blood debt was some sort of historical thing. Why should his blood pay a debt?

Then again, why shouldn’t it? Value is in the eye of the creditor, as they say.

The debt paid, the bot let him stagger his way to class. Now that he was there, he just wanted to sit down and be left alone.

“It won’t happen again,” he mumbled and rushed to take his seat.

“See that it doesn’t, or it’ll be a fine on your account.” The holo of Mr. Thompson’s face followed him as he crossed the room. The bot was an old teaching model, but their school didn’t get lux equipment for anything. Mr. Thompson was probably in an office somewhere in the Upper City in front of a bank of monitors, enjoying the climate control and the fact that he would never have to meet his students in person.

The bot was seven feet tall and sat on a large swivel ball that made it maneuverable in any direction and impossible to tip over. It had multiple channels of video and sound to pick up the whole room, though half of them were jammed with simple jabber apps. There was also a transmitter for uploading and downloading from the students’ datastreams, and that was a lot harder to jam. EduCorp proprietary software. Interference with biodata transmission was punishable by hard labor and six additional months of debt for each count. No one bothered with those hacks. The crime was not worth the punishment.

Once Syd sat, the bot went back to pacing, rolling over the tile with a mechanical purr and a disconcerting click where the tiles weren’t level. It would be pacing the same way in all the classrooms where Mr. Thompson taught. He probably had it on an auto-pacing program designed for “dynamic instruction to meet the developmental needs of the modern vocational student.”

Educational jargon. Syd had read the manual.

Syd had read all the manuals.

His boss at the shop where he worked bought them off the black market so Syd would know how to repair or modify anything that came in. It wasn’t technically legal, but the Valve security companies looked the other way. Every business in the Valve broke some regulation or another. It was the only way to survive. As long as only small rules were being broken, no one cared. If you lived in the Valve, lawlessness wasn’t a vice, it was a life skill.

Syd’s transmitter vibrated the moment he sat down. He tapped it and brought up a tiny projection on the palm of his hand, small enough that only he could see it.

Blud?
Egan’s text popped up in his cupped hand. They messed with their spelling so the EduCorp wordworm didn’t pick up on their conversation.

Syd looked up at Egan and shrugged.

Egan fired another text off and Syd looked down at it.

Yr pAtr0n = a$$.
Egan shook his head, sympathetic.

Syd didn’t disagree. Egan changed the subject.

wHt’s w/the sndRat? Sawyer . . . nw b/f?

Sandrat. That’s what they called the West Coasters and anyone from the lowlands around the Mountain City. There was no civilization left out there, just desert sand and festering refugee camps. To the east were the pestilential swamps and the radioactive cities. They couldn’t even support refugee camps. If you came from the east, you were a swampcat. Like Syd.

y? u jeLus?
Syd texted back. He ignored Egan’s sandrat comment. They’d been friends forever, though lately it seemed like they had a lot more history than current events. Egan was always tweaked on something.

u Wsh.
Egan’s eyes flickered. He didn’t use a projection. He got his datastream from contact lenses, right against the eye. Very lux. Private projectors did not come cheap and with these lenses, you couldn’t even tell Egan was getting data, except that he blinked more than usual and his eyes didn’t seem to focus on anything. Although Egan’s eyes never seemed to focus on anything anyway, lenses or no. A side effect of syntholene. Or maybe its intended effect.

yr nt my Typ
, Syd replied.
2 sKnny.

stLL crShing on Atticus Finch?

Sht up.
Syd swiped.

oo la la he so hndsme . . . u wunt 2 kiss kiss w/him . . .

Atticus Finch, a sandrat who was going places, a skilled gamer with sponsors and everything. He wouldn’t be living in the Valve for long and it didn’t hurt that he was easy on the eyes.

imd
, Syd replied.

mega tmi.

Unauthorized text
flashed across the palm of Syd’s hand and suddenly he was staring at Mr. Thompson’s face hovering in front of his fingers. Egan flinched. He’d just gotten an eyeful of the old coot. Thompson could multitask, that was true. He’d hacked them without stopping his lesson for a second.

Syd looked up from the teacher’s face in his palm and saw that he was staring down at them from the holo on his bot too, double faces glowering at Syd and Egan.

“There is an old saying, gentlemen,” Mr. Thompson declared. “It goes: Secrets, Secrets Are No Fun. Secrets, Secrets Come Undone.”

Suddenly, their brief conversation went public, projected into every datastream in the class, in all five classrooms across the city.

Kid’s he’d never meet, never would meet, were reading Syd’s texts with his best friend. Years of keeping his head down, gone in a flash of data, just like that. Instantaneous.

Egan shrugged it off, but Syd turned rust red. Kids glanced back at him, muttering, their own unauthorized texts pouring out in torrents. He saw a dozen hands drop down, colors in their palms as covert holo projections exploded with the new info, a handheld light show of Syd’s humiliation.

“Projections on desks please,” Mr. Thompson barked, and the palm-sized glows rose and flattened onto the tables in front of each kid.

A few rows up, Atticus Finch raised his projection straight over his head. He glanced back at Syd and his perfect lips sneered. On the holo above him a message popped up in bright red, clear to Syd from across the room, clear to everyone. It was fully spelled, wordworm be damned:
Don’t look at me, You Chapter 11 Punk.

Atticus put his index fingers up and banged them together in Syd’s direction.

“To you too!” Egan grunted and did the same right back, but Atticus had already turned away.

Syd pressed his hands into his eyes, shutting out the world.

Chapter 11.

Slang for guys like him. A bankrupt 1 and 1, a binary insult. Two of the same thing pressed together. The old way of saying it was homo.

So much for a private life.

Everyone probably suspected it already—he’d never had a girlfriend—but now they knew, right there in undeniable digital. Syd had a thing for Atticus Finch, or at least for the
idea
of Atticus Finch, just like all the Fangirls did.

He sank into his chair.

Class continued. Something about the emancipation of the working class through open credit markets, but it was boring stuff. Ancient history. Syd stewed where he sat.

“Hey,” Egan whispered, not daring another text message. “Don’t worry about it. Thompson’s a knockoff of a man. Don’t let him get to you.”

“I’m not worried about Thompson,” Syd whispered back.

“You could do better than Atticus Finch.”

“Shut up, okay?”

“I guess you like ’em dumb, huh?”

“Just. Shut. Up.”

“How about the sandrat with the busted projector? He . . . uh . . . open for your sort of business?”

“You aren’t helping.”

“Relax. If anyone messes with you, you tell me. They’ll regret it.”

“
You’re
messing with me.”

“Other than me.”

Syd sighed. He knew Egan was as good as his word. He was ruthless and always had been, but he valued loyalty above all else. He didn’t care that Syd was a Chapter 11, as long as he was loyal.

Egan had come to the orphanage around the same time Syd did, though Egan was local. Not a refugee, just unwanted. When they first arrived at the orphanage, they were assigned to share a sleeping compartment. It was an accident of fate, but it worked.

Egan called Syd “swampcat” until they were eight years old. Then Syd hit a growth spurt first and punched Egan in the face. He called Syd “Syd” from then on. Syd had only ever called Egan by his name.

They stuck together. They looked after each other and fought with each other and fought for each other. They told each other their plans and their dreams and their secrets. Some of them were even true. They were, in short, best friends.

After Syd took up working and living in the shop, Egan kept freelancing for the security firms. He trashed stores that competitors were supposed to protect, stole from other people’s clients, and looked out for anyone who’d come into some success and might want a little peace of mind. Syd never had a talent for that kind of commerce and he had no interest in salvage picking or selling himself to leering old has-beens. Egan, however, didn’t mind getting dirty. Blood washed off easier than poverty.

Blood. Syd couldn’t tell if he was lightheaded from giving away half his blood or if he was lightheaded from shame, but he definitely needed to lie down.

Instead, he stared at the public projection of the day’s lesson in front of him. Thompson had moved on to the Nigerian Trade Embargo.

“Hey, Syd,” Egan whispered again. “Syd!” He was not about to let Syd just tune out and pass the time in peace.

“Why are you even here today?” Syd whispered back at him. “I thought you paid Thompson off every week?”

“It’s not all about grades,” Egan said, wrinkling his eyebrows at Syd’s tone. “And don’t get snippy with me, princess. I came to school for
you.
”

“To ruin my life?”

“To make your day,” Egan smiled. “Tonight. Upper City party. Mega lux. Patrons only. Supposed to be insane. Party of the year.”

“Right.”

“I’m serious. It’s exclusive.”

“So how are you going to get in?”

Egan glanced up at the robot pacing in the front of the class. He leaned closer to Syd. “You mean
we.
How are
we
going to get in?” He smiled a fiend’s smile. “I know a patron. Guy can get me inside and he’s got a hookup for two ID patches that’ll get us past the scanners. My treat.”

“I’ve got to work.”

“It doesn’t even start until midnight. I know you’re not working at midnight.”

“You know dancing’s not really my thing,” Syd tried, but Egan was relentless when he got an idea in his head.

“Not your thing? You ever been to a patron’s party before? Everyone’s beautiful, Syd. Everyone. And they don’t have hangups like in the Valve. They’re Upper City. They’re all, like, NeoHumanists or something. You can be as eleven as you wanna be. No one’ll judge the lust of your loins.”

Syd’s face flushed. “You’re disgusting.”

“I’m desperate,” said Egan. “You gotta come with me.”

“Why do you care so much if I’m there?”

“Because girls love a Chapter 11 guy,” he said, as if it were obvious. “I need you to be my sidekick.”

“Pass.”

“Oh, you cannot leave me hanging. You. Can. Not.” Egan looked serious. Furious. This was a matter of principle. Not going would be an unforgivable breach of Egan’s unwritten contract for their friendship, signed in so much blood over so many years.

“Fine.” Syd caved, sighing.

“Good,” said Egan and turned back toward the front of the classroom, acting as if he were looking at the graph that Mr. Thompson had displayed on a public projection. “Come by my place at ten,” he whispered. “I’ll give you clothes. You can’t wear those run-down Valve rags. People expect a certain standard from a homosexual.”

“How do you know so much about it?” Syd smirked.

“Like I said: You wish.” Egan smirked back. “Just don’t be late. I don’t want all the girls taken by the time we get there.”