Escapology E-Book

Ren Warom

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 539

Beschreibung

Shock Pao is the best. There isn't a system he can't crack into, nothing he can't steal for the right price. Outside virtual world the Slip, though, he's a Fail—no degree, no job, no affiliations to protect him from angry ex-customers. Of which he has quite a few. So when his ex brings Shock a job which could help him escape his miserable existence, he accepts, little realizing that it will turn out to be his most impossible, illegal and insane assignment yet.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also by Ren Warom

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One

The Story of a Shocking Boy

Ask Me Why I Do This Again

Dock of the Bay

Fed to a Joon Bug

Nice Work If You Can Get It

Down the Rabbit Hole

Amiga and the Shit Mountain

Trouble on the High Seas

Mim Bearing Gifts

The Problem with EVaC

Volk

Johnny Sez Has a Bad Day

The Neon Angel

Dead Ends and Corners

Land Ship Showdown

Rocks and Hard Bastards

Mim Makes a Deal

Everything’s Eventual

Inner Spaces and Awkward Places

Part Two

Journey to the Centre of the Hive

Time to Call in Joon Bug

Mim and Johnny Sez Go Hunting

Resurrection Comes

Why Bugs Have a Bad Rap

Cavalry on Blades

Going Underground…

Monumentally Fucked

Slipping IRL and Breathing Problems

When a Plan Comes Together

Good Company and a Good Day to Die

The Towering Infernal

Change Is Underrated

So What Happens in the End

About the Author

Acknowledgments

ALSO BY REN WAROM AND AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

Virology (June 2017)

EscapologyPrint edition ISBN: 9781785650918E-book edition ISBN: 9781785650925

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: June 20161 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Ren Warom asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Copyright © 2016 Ren Warom

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Jacqui—who drank with the Blue Monkey God and laughed and loved life.

PART ONE

The Story of a Shocking Boy

Curled up against the window like a squashed bug, Shock squints down at the tops of rain-swollen clouds, the plunging cliff-side drops of the ’scrapers, and half imagines he might be dying.

The mono speeds up, merging clouds and ’scrapers to silvery grey smears. It looks like the world is melting, an ugly dream swilling like full-body nausea just under his uncertain flesh. He’s never been in Slip as long as that before and never will again. It’s made him unsure of everything, thinned reality out to an untrustworthy husk.

He can’t find his focus, his physicality. Keeps wondering why the fuck he has legs and can’t swim. What this meat sack is with its tight skin and ever-present grind of hunger in the goddamn fuel tank. Can barely think, his brain swilling like half-liquefied tofu in a bone box.

Can’t work out, in fact, what he’s doing in this sardine-crush mono on the way to Plaza of all places. He has a bed calling him, probably musty by now but still warmer than this, dryer at the very least. A baggie with two bumps left hidden under the pillow he’s pretty much been jonesing for.

So what the fuck is this?

The mono slows, approaching lower Plaza. He thinks he’ll stay on for the round trip, back to where he started, but then he gets up, driven by impulses he’s not yet making sense of. Too scared to take the shoot in case it pulverizes what’s left of his brain, he careens down flights of stairs, fingers gripping the rails spasmodically, convinced the ground will disappear, or he will, or both.

Drops off the last into the usual Plaza crowd and allows himself to be carried, bound by a straitjacket of bodies streaming toward the high end. Tries again to riddle out why he’s come here of all places, but only two thoughts wriggle through the tofu mass toward comprehension.

First, the commitment to hunting down and bitch-slapping the little POS in Risi who fed him this giant cosmic shafting. Ten neurone-frying days jacked into Slip writing virads for fuck’s sake. Outrageous. Frankly uncalled for. What was that punk’s name? Reg? Ralph? Rudy? Arsehole.

Second, coming off the back of this road-kill feeling and the lack of those pillow-hidden bumps, is the cell-deep need to find a little chemical relief for his ills. He’s going to hate himself for this in a week’s time, but only because he’ll need more and he won’t have enough flim to eat, let alone calm his head.

Tracking into a line of liver-whore salarymen half-cut on synth-saki, he manoeuvres by degrees over to a grubby little coffee stall with dimly lit back seating known as Ducky’s. Ducky Took runs the joint; a sleazy, skinny little Euro, claims to be Irish but talks like wharf-jocks, all dropped aitches and hard consonants, ready to punch your tongue out. If he’s anything near Irish, Shock’s a fucking Scandawhoov.

“Yo, Duckster,” he croaks out as he swings in, clinging to the cracked plastic of the counter like grim death. “Got any bumps? I’m screwed from ten days in the swim.”

Ducky struts out from in back, pipe-cleaner legs shucked in skin-tight denim, old school, and sweat-soaked wife-beater hugging his bird-bone chest. He’s got swagger all right, but no meat to back it up. He sniffs, wiping snot off on the back of one thin, hairy forearm; it glistens in the lights, snail-trailed next to several the same.

Ducky whistles. “You in the swim? How the mighty ’ave fallen, aye? Fought you was a gonner, I did. Like them other Haunts.”

“What other Haunts?”

“Ones gone AWOL.”

Shock tries to parse what the hell Ducky might be saying. Fails miserably.

“What?”

“Yeah, got some Haunts gone bye-bye. Signal dead an’ all that.”

“Ducky, Haunts don’t have a fucking signal, that’s why we’re Haunts.”

Shrugging, Ducky picks his nose. Grumbles, “Jus’ what I ’eard, innit. No need to split ’airs.”

“Whatever. Have you got bumps or fucking not?”

“Might ’ave. Yuh got flim?”

“Just got off ten days, Ducks. I have flim.”

Ducky nods. “Then I’ve got me some scrams and a few baggies of skippers. Wot’s yuh poison?”

Shock screws up his face. He doesn’t like the S-series. Whoever synthed that shit got their quantities cracked. S high starts ugly, like drowning in syrup, and thins out to something too close to normal. But the nearest dealer to Ducky’s is about a mile further down the Plaza and Shock won’t make it, can already feel withdrawal seeping into the matter of his cells like rot. He leaves it any longer he’s gonna be scooped out hollow and fold to the floor like an empty suit, carrion for the crows of Plaza to pick clean. In other words, choice is a city hub in high orbit, way beyond his reach.

“Gimmie a dozen scrams.”

Ducky goes out back, returns dangling a baggy in filthy fingers. Handing over a stack of flim, Shock tries not to think about those fingers bagging up his S; it’ll make him hurl whatever poor-excuse-for-food synth he was tube-fed for the last ten days, and keeping things down is a priority of his.

It takes forever to open the baggy, the meat jacket still refusing signals from the tofu brain, but he finally peels the plastic lips apart and shakes out two. Presses them hard into the skin of his neck until they pop, leaving as always a gross taste in the back of the throat.

Totally worth it.

Veins of cold steal in on the back of that foul taste, carrying relief to tired matter, beginning the inexorable slide from dead cells to cellular fireworks. Saluting Ducky he pushes off from the counter and stumbles out onto Plaza, tucking the baggie next to his flim.

As the buzz hits, Plaza lights become stars bleeding to mildew stains on a rotten canvas. The street stretches, sags, melting into heavy folds. Muting sound. Diffusing movement to a glutinous crawl. Shops ooze around him, droning out noise that only a moment ago was the frantic beat of dub-tech, the chitinous whir of machinery, the jabber of voices ramped to eleven.

And he’s swimming again, legs treading water, arms fanned like fins. He grins, some sort of sloppy bastard brother to a smile, and rolls off down to wherever it was he was headed. Should check his IMs, but can’t figure out where his brain is any more at all. Bliss.

The crowd trickles past as he floats through, unable to strike the lunatic smile from his face. It’s stuck on with S—sticky psych glue. He waits it out, jaw aching, like it’s a shuttle on the mono, until the glutinous drag fades from his bones, his brain, and leaves him clearer, a little awake, verging on aware.

The trickle transfers from crowd to cheeks, a physical/perception shift inexplicable without experience of S, and allows his smile to drool away. He lifts hands heavy as orbiting moons and scrubs at his face, anticipating the ticklish needles that follow the numb and trying to rub them away before they set in. It’s useless, but he does it every time.

His IM blips at him, loud as a thunderclap in the skull. Too loud, like his brain’s achieved self-awareness and rebelled by throwing the vol-switch on his drive to max. Halfway through seriously considering this as a possible version of reality he finally clicks to the fact that it’s been doing the same damn thing for about two minutes, gradually getting louder. Something he programmed in to make sure he got calls about work even when he’s so borked on bumps his head might as well be a meat popsicle.

“Oh screw you, past me,” he mutters, accessing his neural drive.

Where the fuck are you, Shocking boy? Mimic, tart as a pickle. Her voice provokes instant intestinal distress.

“Shit.”

He’d forgotten all about Mim. She hit him up the second he broke surface for air, so to speak, with a job offer he could have done with ten days ago, before being forced to resort to trusting Ronnie. Rick? Or was it Rita? He will remember.

He’d love to tell Mim no, interacting with her in any way being so much like oil choosing to co-mingle with water it’s ridiculous, but she’s his only remaining decent meal ticket; a fact that makes him want to smash his face into the sidewalk or something.

He cannot believe this is his life. It can’t be.

Six months ago, he was sure it would go differently. He Failed his Psych Eval, smiling the whole time. Walked out of that room without a backward glance, practically waving both middle fingers. Didn’t want the life of a Pass, no thank you, he had a whole different career progression in mind; a way back to Sendai District, his holy fucking grail.

He jumped straight into high-level, mui, mui illegal jobs with payoffs that make the wad in his jacket look a goddamn joke. Had every reason to believe himself a shoe-in for the top echelons of Fail society, the kind of flim that makes Sendai a given. Only it’s all gone horribly pear-shaped. Or rather Mim-shaped.

They used to be a thing. Or at least he thought they were, until she put him into a situation that helped him understand how mistaken he’d been. Thanks to her, his career took a swan dive, and he currently holds the dubious honour of being a walking corpse in the eyes of three of the Gung’s significant players. Only one of those hanging death sentences is directly her fault, but as a beginning of the end goes it was a doozy, setting the scene for all the rest, and he feels entitled to a certain visceral dislike. So why does he still work with her? Simple mathematics. Before Mim, Shock was alone.

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.

Ask Me Why I Do This Again

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.

She’s a quiet storm scything through them, blood spiralling around her like red snow. Bodies fall in swift succession until there are only two left standing: Amiga and the rat.

Market sounds drift up from below. Somewhere a pigeon coos softly. The rat’s face is a study. Rage and terror. He keeps looking down, as if eyes alone can undo the wreckage of his crew. They look so vulnerable now, these walking statistics, no more than the sad fact of their numbers in a graph. The first lesson Amiga learnt when she started to kill was how easy it is, and how utterly horrifying that can be.

She tosses the shoge aside, feeling tired. She really wants to punch something hard, something that will hurt. Anything to shake the sensation of not quite being human.

“Are you going to come quietly now?” she asks.

He screeches, thrusts his face forward and laughs high and loud. Then legs it.

“Bollocks.”

Lifting her arm, Amiga sends a dart from her wrist-bow through the back of his knee. Watches impassively as he collapses to the rooftop, clawing and screeching.

“Should have done that first and saved some energy,” she says to herself, walking over to snatch him up by the scruff of the neck. She zip-ties his hands to his belt to stop him flailing at her like an angry toddler. “Man, I need a drink.”

* * *

Hauling the rat down from the roof turns the puddles of sweat forming under her jumpsuit to a small lake. Comfy. Halfway down she IMs Twist, and he tells her to wait for a car. What choice does she have? It’s not like she can drag this fucker through the streets.

Her mood falls from not amused to downright pissy. Back in the alley, which is both stenchy and freezing, they wait. Terrific. Her boss is being a pain in the arse lately, this business with Haunts stealing all his attention. Whatever it is he wants, he’s ploughed through three of them already—literally, since they died in Slip—and he’s still not satisfied. Other crime lords are beginning to notice, and it’s making Twist act pretty damn weird.

Take that Haunt he’d sent her after, Shock Pao, idiot extraordinaire. Pao screwed him over and Twist wanted him creatively filleted. She was doing her level best to make that dream come true, despite catching a Haunt being hella high on the difficulty scale, then bang, Twist pulls the contract. Twist never pulls a contract. Out of character much.

The car takes an age to arrive, by which time Amiga’s lost the feeling in her toes. Once inside the vehicle, the Streek starts up a horrible racket, so she knocks him out and settles back into the cool leather of the seat. Real leather, of course.

Traffic’s terrible and in the endless void of time, the quiet broken only by the soft snoring of the rat and the purr of the engine, Amiga starts to think. Inevitable really, and always a mistake. By slow degrees thought becomes a mire, sucking her in until she’s struggling to find air.

Those Streeks were so young. Younger than her, and she’s not yet twenty-three. Now they’re just empty bags of flesh and bone, leaking blood. Wasted potential. How does she justify being their ending?

It should be simple. Do your job. Killed or be killed. If she hadn’t then sure, she would have died. But to her the equation is incomprehensible. Her or them? What kind of a trade-off is that? Her life is worthless. By extension, so is she. Or perhaps she was worthless to begin with and life had to run to catch up?

“Shit!” Amiga punches the seat, furious with herself, with the day, with that stupid kimchi merchant. This is not a good place to be. If she goes to Twist carrying all this fucking weak bullshit in her head, she might as well hand him a knife and expose her throat. Only she can’t stop. Can’t breathe. Can’t shake this feeling she always gets, that it wasn’t fair, wasn’t honest—that the blood on her hands is beyond cleaning. That she’s the sum of the stains and nothing more.

Reaching out with a shaking hand, she runs a finger down the glass of the car window. The screen reacts: fading the black through pale grey to clear glass, so she can see light, colour. They’re on a main arterial road to the centre of the Gung, surrounded by other cars. Choked in.

Either side of the road ’scrapers rear their endless backs like giants, their shoulders swathed in cloud. Some of these are residential, their myriad tiny windows and slim, useless balconies draped with clotheslines and trailing plants, all tied into chicken wire. She remembers with a bitter twist of the stomach how as a child she’d fold back the wire and lean out, trying to find air.

Her baa-baa, Michiko, might be making maki, or perhaps steaming nikuman on their tiny two-ring stove, the warmth of the steam a familiar comfort. Above her head, on the sleeping platforms of their ten-foot-square family cage, her mother, Indira, and her aunties would be arguing over their sewing machines.

In the sound of their voices, in the steam, in her tiny crack of open window, counting ant-sized cars as they funnelled past below, Amiga could breathe. She’d wish those moments could last forever, because when they stopped, when Michiko took whatever she was cooking in a box to Amiga’s father on the dock, Indira and the aunties would turn their vitriol on her. They wouldn’t dare be cruel in front of her baa-baa.

Born eighteen years before the world broke, Michiko died at the grand age of 233, when Amiga was six. A hard woman, sharp of tongue and wit, any softness was reserved for her little Amiga-chan, her little dopperugengã. And she is. Amiga has a photo in her drive of Michiko as a young woman, back when Japan still existed. She’s sat on a wall, dressed in torn jeans, loosely tied boots, a Mickey Mouse zombie tee and a baseball cap, sticking her tongue out.

They are mirror twins: piercing amber eyes, a pointed face, knife-straight black hair, too many sharp lines for beauty. A hard face to hide. Harder yet to live with. It reminds Amiga of how her mother never forgave her for being Michiko’s favourite. But you can’t choose who loves you. Or who doesn’t.

The car turns, taking a ramp up into a huge ’scraper, to the car parks on the lower floors, their light made cold by reflection through narrow windows onto stark, white stone. Nothing built on this last scrap of solid land goes underground; everyone’s too scared of what might happen.

Most who could recall the breaking of the world and its subsequent drowning are dead now, like Michiko, but the horror is a kind of race memory and there’s not one soul on the Gung who’d dig into the earth for any reason. Not even to plant a flower. Look at the base of any building in the Gung erected after the breaking and you’ll find them laid on plascrete, bound in to the earth. All the better to hold it together.

Shaking her rat awake, Amiga hustles him into the nearest shoot. She knows this building, knows exactly where Twist will be: the revolving restaurant near the top. It’s his favourite place to eat. Amiga couldn’t even afford the garnish on an entrée. Oh well. Probably tastes like crap anyway. In the shoot the rat starts giggling compulsively, so she gives him a slap. Shuts him up for maybe five seconds, then he starts again. Louder.

She leans toward him and says sweetly, “Shut up or I’ll plug your mouth with your eyeballs.”

The rest of the journey upward is silent.

They’re met by the maître d’, who’s clearly unhappy about a bloodied Streek in her restaurant but escorts them to Twist’s table nonetheless, her hands clasped, white-knuckled, in front of her belly. Twist lounges in his chair, waiting. He’s a small, slender man; oriental grace in a Scots package. His cool brown eyes don’t look through you, but into you. All the way in. Sometimes Amiga is terrified she can’t hide anything from him at all.

He dismisses the maître d’ by ignoring her and offers Amiga a smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes. This man holds his cards so close to his chest they’ve fused into the flesh.

The rat starts to struggle, making a very annoying whimpering noise. Pinching the soft flesh between nose and lip, Amiga forces him to his knees, making a pretty mess of the polished stone floor. Twist raises his brow.

“Amiga,” he tuts, “you’re not usually so clumsy.” In his soft Scottish drawl every lilting note can harbour a false sense of security but Amiga is reassured. He’s feeling magnanimous, she can tell by the playful tone behind his words, the slight crinkle at the corner of his right eye. Amiga’s learnt to read Twist like land ship Captains read the sea. Basic survival 101.

She sighs. “Kimchi seller outed me. Long story.”

He flicks a finger at her. “And that’s all from one little knee?”

Amiga looks down at herself and pretty much dies of embarrassment. She’s in a top-class restaurant in a pea-green jumpsuit absolutely drenched with blood. Her life: for real awkward at all times.

“No. Well. I may have encountered some of his friends too.”

“I see.”

Twist turns his gaze on the rat, who’s giggling compulsively again and shaking, his bloodied leg jerking against the floor like he’s being electrocuted.

“We’re going to have a little talk, you and I,” he says gently. “About your friend Nero.” He flicks a look up at Amiga. “Go get cleaned up.”

She nods and heads for the back, where a discreet granite-lined corridor leads to the bathrooms. Their opulence offends her, but she makes extravagant use of the soap and towels, scrubbing her face clean and removing the blood from her bodysuit as best she can. The attendant gives her the filthiest look ever. Normally that would make Amiga feel guilty, but today she’s pretty much at tilt.

When she goes back, the Streek’s where she left him, and although Twist hasn’t so much as moved, the rat’s pissed himself and he’s been crying.

Twist looks up as she approaches.

“According to our mutual friend here, you wiped out half of Nero’s crew today. Who’s getting a bonus?”

“This bitch,” she pokes a thumb at her chest, hoping she looks way more casual than she feels.

He smiles, and this time it reaches his eyes. Her violence always delights him. She used to be proud of that.

“I’m done with this now. You Clean the rest ASAP. This little shit gave up the whole op. It’s in your IMs.”

She nods. “What do you want me to do with him?”

“Toss him. And leave the others where they can be found. Be creative. I want Nero to understand the full import of his mistake.”

“You want Nero for your collection?”

“Of course. He wants some notoriety, he can reside amongst others who shared the same delusion.”

“Understood.”

Back in the shoot, Amiga calls for the top floor. The Streek’s pretty much given up fighting. He’s slumped in her grasp, whimpering away to himself. He fucking stinks. Probably he’s shat himself as well. Being on the unpleasant side of her boss will do wonders for your digestion first, and then your mortality.

Amiga is as afraid of Twist Calhoun as everyone else is. She’s a Cleaner; her job is all about swift, discreet violence, but he’s not one of those crime lords who employ Cleaners because they themselves can’t clean house. She’s seen him commit violence with brutal, cold efficiency. Needless cruelty. He’s something else, her boss. He gets his hands good and dirty when he wants to, and these days working for him fills her with a blank, all-consuming loathing. But a girl’s got to eat, and once you work for someone like Twist, you don’t just walk away.

At the top floor she hustles the rat up a flight of stairs and out onto the roof. Over to the edge. He gains some fight back here, struggling and wailing. She yanks him close enough to speak right into his ear.

“I do not enjoy this. It’s my fucking job. We all do our jobs, don’t we? Sometimes there’re consequences for that. This is yours.”

And she throws him over the edge, listening impassively as that final scream fades away. Somewhere down there, over a mile away, he’ll hit the ground and shatter into a wet heap. That’s what bodies do from this height.

Maybe someone will witness it and start screaming. Maybe he’ll hit a passer by, crushing them as he splatters. Fuck but she hopes not. This is her job, and she does what she’s paid to, and this is what Twist means when he requires someone tossed. That’s the rat’s consequence. Hers never seem to end.

The price you pay for doing a job like this is just about everything.

Dock of the Bay

Petrie doesn’t trust calm seas. In these vast waters, calm is a face without expression, hiding its true intent. A mirror for pirates to catch you unawares, for sea creatures grown monstrous large without the limit of land to contain them to sneak up and drag your ship to impossible depths. He’s seen it happen, even to land ships bigger than the one he calls home. No, a calm sea fills him with nothing but dread.

Hollering instructions to his crews via IM, he makes his way to the pinnacle of the central crow to keep a better look out. Just ahead, the Tri-Asian ranges breach the serenity of the surface in snaggle-toothed clusters. Beyond them lies the Gung, so close now he can almost smell it on the air: heat, dust and sweat.

The people of Foon Gung like to call it the last land on earth. Plain ignorance. They imagine the great ocean mountain ranges as nothing but underbelly; exposed innards of earth and rock. In truth the earth broke ugly and whilst some lands shattered or drowned, others were lifted to precipitous heights, and if you look, you can find land everywhere.

Tiny islands of green clinging to the bottoms of harsh ranges. Continental shelves tilted at unnatural angles, carrying the remains of cities, their buildings collapsed to a mass and broken but still usable. Ripe for looting and for the occasional group of desperate folk, home. They share their craggy dwellings with huge colonies of raucous seabirds, herds of sea lions and seals, all under the shadow of great albatrosses with wingspans so wide they resemble dragons in the fire of dawn.

And then, of course, there is the land that sails. Land ships. Great chunks that floated away in the first quakes 200 years ago and did not immediately crumble into the sea, held up by a fortuitous grasp on oxygen, stowed away in great pockets in their depths. Miracles of the ocean, some people call them. From the tip of the crow, Petrie looks down to survey his home, Resurrection City.

She’s so massive from prow to stern that, from up here and on a day as calm as this, it might be possible to believe yourself on dry land if you didn’t know any better. Before the breaking of the world, Resurrection City was a corner of Eastern Africa, Somalia to be exact, and her crew and citizens comprise an ethnic mix of Africans, Afrikaans, and émigrés from other land ships all living and working together. An extended family of once-strangers.

Shaped like a Palaeolithic spearhead, she scythes through the waves on twelve sets of massive jerry-rigged wheels much like an old steam-boat’s, but larger, leaner and forged from steel. They gleam darkly in the sun, the sound of their churning a thunderous roar like the approach of giant waves. Her sides like cliffs, she supports upon her extraordinary back a tri-level haphazard city of freakish driftwood and metal towers, dazzling in sunlight and twisted to wind-defying complexity, all strung with a cat’s cradle of ropes upon which crawl the thousands of citizens and crew whose daily toil keeps her afloat.

It’s a sight that never fails to move him. This immense lady, this ship formed of land, is home. He wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. No other ship would be adequate, no city hub grazing the edge of space, no bedraggled commune eeking out an existence on the tiny green spars of land or half-intact cities clinging to the ranges, and certainly not the Gung, whose claustrophobic streets he tried and failed to survive as a teen, running from one horror it seemed right into the jaws of another.

Through the Tri-Asian ranges the sun plays hide-and-seek with Resurrection’s haphazard towers until they emerge out the other side, threading between jagged rocks to sea like glass, a mirror for the sky. If you could see to the bottom of the ocean here you’d find the tsunami defence wall. In an emergency the wall rises from the water high enough to blot out the view of the sea for the highest-living citizens in the Gung.

Sailing as long as he has, Petrie’s witnessed them testing it more than once; all that steel against the might of the ocean. One day there’ll be a wave too high to hold back. Everything down here is on borrowed time, hanging on by sheer dumb luck.

The harbour at Foon Gung is dead ahead now, rearing from the water like a metal-capped grin. Only ten minutes away at full speed, but they daren’t come in that fast.

Steady! he yells to the wheel crews. Half power. Don’t wanna scrape anything off those harbour arms.

Carved out of the Gung’s south-east corner during the breaking, the harbour is only twenty miles wide, with two long arms reaching plaintively into the ocean, and, like the rest of the Gung, every inch of it groans with architecture. Foon-Gung being the last solid land, every one of its seven hundred miles, including the mountains to the rear, bristles with steel and glass and stone, reaching up into the clouds in audacious rebellion against nature.

The Resurrection’s come close to nudging one of the ’rises teetering on the edges of the arms before now. His chest shrinks thinking how many people they might kill if they inadvertently topple one—those ’rises are cage apartments, hundreds of families crammed into tight spaces like barnacles on a rock. Not life at all, at least not one he wants.

Bosun Petrie, slow your boat. You’re set to break my arms there. Harbour Master Sigmund lacks basic IM manners, always slamming in without so much as a warning chime.

Petrie takes a breath, thankful that Sigmund can’t see his face.

We’re slowing. Half speed already. We’ll dock safe just like we always do. We’re a ways out yet.

Sigmund snorts. Sure son, and these folk from Fulcrum love to be kept waiting. Don’t spin me any of that bullshit you try with the deputies, I can see your wake from here, and you’re coming in too fast. Make ’em wait. You’re paying aren’t you?

Irritated, Petrie snaps, We are, through the nose as ever, but we’re not going to crash in like pirates trying to please them.

Silence.

Petrie curses his tongue. He shouldn’t have said that, it was damned foolish. But Sigmund merely comes back with a warning.

Careful, son, a loose tongue is a dangerous thing. Now get that speed down for crap’s sake. I’ve got crews out; don’t need ’em ploughed under your wheels.

Aye, aye.

A cantankerous, mannerless old bastard Sigmund might be, but he feels the same about Fulcrum as everyone does. Fulcrum’s the Corp that runs the Gung, that owns and runs the Slip that keeps the world together. That’s some goddamn power right there. Too much. Four times a year they send Techs to check your server equipment. It’s mandatory and costs a bloody fortune. Resurrection isn’t alone in sometimes being unable to pay when it’s due and Fulcrum always charges more for delays.

When they’re close enough for dammit, Petrie clips on to a line and slides down to the central crow deck to stand by his Captain, Cassius Angel, as they negotiate the southeast arm. Folks hang out the windows on the edge ’rises to wave and holler. Used to be they might throw confetti but though a land ship berthing is still an event, it’s not the wonder it used to be. Familiarity breeds complacence.

Once they’re in the harbour proper, the berthing klaxon begins to sound. Resurrection responds with three of her horns and they have an ear-splitting exchange as the harbour crews and Resurrection wheel crews coordinate her toward her berth, 800 metres out from the docks. The splash of great wheels, louder by far in the enclosure of the harbour churn her to a gentle halt, waves slapping at her sides, loosing small clods of earth they’ll have to stop and patch at the Tri-Asian ranges on their way out.

Petrie roars the order to anchor via IM. Feels rather than hears them drop, a deep dragging and grind, a vibration like a shudder, as if the Resurrection dislikes her sudden immobility.

He pats the ropes, grinning. “Easy, old girl. We’re not here long.”

For the next ten minutes he supervises the wheel crews with lashing and clearing, organizes the Tech teams into groups to make sure the server checks run smoothly.

Hoi, Bosun! Petrie! The head of their medical team, Lane, barely reining in her impatience. We off? I’ve got four of my staff by the schooners ready to go. Going to need all the time we can squeeze out of this server check.

“Shit!” he mutters, remembering.

Several vicious attacks in the two months since they last berthed to drop off trade goods have left their hospital supplies dangerously low and he promised Lane time to stock up whilst the servers are being checked. Reaching the bays he vaults onto the lower ropes, clips on his zip and sails down the line to unclip and land beside her. A large man and packed with muscle, he towers over her. Petrie towers over most everyone and it never feels normal. He’s never become used to the body good nutrition gave him.

“Let’s go then,” he says.

“Impressive timing there,” she says, smiling.

“Hey, you call, I come running. Let’s go wangle some inland time.”

She places a hand on his arm as her staff scramble down the ropes to the schooner.

“I know you hate handling Sigmund, Petrie. This is much appreciated.”

He pats her hand. “Just do me a favour and sneak me some brandy, will you? Chances are I’m going to need it.”

“Done.”

“You’re an angel.”

Their schooners are thirty feet long, solar powered and nippy as hell, and the journey from shipside to dockside takes less than ten minutes. The negotiation for an inland trip on the other hand takes over fifty; despite Sigmund knowing he’s keeping Petrie from dealing with Fulcrum’s Techs.

Maintaining calm by willpower alone, Petrie manages to wangle Lane a whole hour and hire her a truck at half charge so she can bulk buy. He sees her and her team off safely before heading back to oversee the transfer of Fulcrum’s Techs to Resurrection. They’re none too pleased. They can’t leave until they’ve done their job and they think he’s stalled on purpose. Yet another irritation in his day.

Once they’re soothed and on their way, Petrie ventures over to the dock to vet the waiting refugees, a bedraggled bunch who’ve likely checked the berthing schedules and made certain to be here on the right day for a good ship. His head aches at the sight of them. It seems cruel, especially when people are desperate, but a land ship is a working community and they’ve learnt not to be indiscriminate, as much as they might want to be.

For Petrie, this process is especially tough. He knows what it’s like to be willing to do anything to escape a bad situation and yet terrified of somehow walking into something worse. And there’s plenty of something worse to go round. Of the hundreds of land ships sailing the ocean, maybe three quarters could be described as friendly. The rest, not so much.

Some are scavengers, taking what’s already been remade useful, their grotesque visages built to terrify smaller ships into submission. Others are pirates out for trash, flesh and treasure, preying on any ship caught in their sights and occasionally hitting the harbour district for whatever can be snatched before the sec-drones attack. The worst of all are totalitarian states, with flags and laws and dire punishments for transgression—and the most notorious of these is the Saskatoon Ark, captained by Daly Pentecost.

Petrie was born on the Ark, amongst all that filth and horror, under the iron hand of Pentecost. He ran away when he was fifteen during a short dock for supplies at the Gung. Jumped clean over the side. Pretended to drown so no one would think to follow, swimming through icy waters to hide under the dock, shivering and terrified of being found.

He thought then that he could survive anything, but two years living rough on the streets of the Gung left him so desperate to get back to the ocean he took the first ship that came in. Lucky for him, that was Resurrection City.

Today there are thirty refugees hoping for the same luck, and only he stands in their way. From the info they shoot to his IM, he has to turn down six straight away. The rest are a mix of skilled WAMOS—Passes, the so-called well-adjusted members of society—done with living inside the system, and Fails wanting to try out life on the seas—all of whom are easy to accept. Except one.

Her records seem perfect: a high-level Tech WAMOS fresh out of Corp life and wanting freedom, but her timing is interesting. Questionable. He beckons her forward.

“Name?”

It’s on her info, but sometimes they forget their own cover stories, the names on fake records bought in haste.

“Volk,” she replies in a soft voice with a burr of accent he can’t place. Perhaps Nordic. Unusual if so. Close up, he can see she’s packed with augments, her gaze remote, but he can feel the life in her. She’s angular and fair-skinned, with untameable red hair to match the energy he can sense leashed within. She’ll make a good sailor if she’s fit for it.

Volk. Just like her records. That’s a good start maybe.

“No other names?”

“None I like to give. I’m not close to my family.”

“Any reason for that?”

“The usual. Confliction of life goals, gradual estrangement none of us particularly tried to prevent.”

“I see. You realize we’re an extended family aboard the Resurrection? We’re pretty much obliged to get along even if we don’t agree with one other. Not many places to get away from someone you dislike on a land ship, not even one of her grand size.”

She forces a smile, clearly struggling hard to make a good impression.

“I said I’m not close to my family, that doesn’t mean I’m incapable of getting along with other people. You can’t choose the family you’re born to. It’s not like you get a free pass from being the offspring of absolute arseholes.”

Her dry humour is such a surprise he finds himself laughing.

“True enough. How are you with teamwork?”

“I’m ex-Corp, Bosun. Teamwork was my life.”

“Why the Resurrection? I see you’ve been waiting on a ship for over two weeks. Rest of this bunch have only been here ten days—missed the Hepzibar. You didn’t though. Good ship, that. Not good enough for you?”

She regards him steadily, her remote eyes giving away nothing.

“It has a good reputation, yes. But it isn’t Resurrection City.”

“Afford to be choosy, can you?”

She raises her brows, as if it’s obvious.

“With my stats? Of course.”

Petrie considers her carefully for a moment. His instincts tell him she’s in some deep trouble. Frightened. Is she trouble for the Resurrection though? He thinks not. Not only is her record clean but he’s finely attuned to hidden malice and he gets no sense of it from her. He has no concern about anyone who might be after her. Resurrection is a titan, well armed and battle hardened. Coming after her once she’s on board would be foolhardy.

“Well, okay,” he says to Volk, “I can see you’re in some kind of trouble, but you aren’t trouble yourself, so welcome to the family.”

She nods, but her relief is like a tidal wave, it almost knocks him over.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t prove me wrong.”

“I’ll do my very best.”

“Do better.”

“Aye, aye Bosun.”

Aye, aye, indeed. He watches her go, clutching her bag so tightly he knows for a fact her hands are going to hurt for a week, and hopes he hasn’t just made a very big mistake.

Fed to a Joon Bug

A neural drive is like a mind, there’s no switching it off, no running from it. You can mute it, sure. You can even do as Shock does and fry your brain on bumps, wiping as many clear seconds as possible from the clock. But much like a persistent thought a drive will let you know by hook or by crook when you’ve a million and one messages backed up and pounding on their horns like angry drivers in a ten-mile tail-back.

Shock’s had his on mute since speaking to Mim, which was dumb knowing her pro-stance on harassment. Now his drive’s buzzing away with angry message wasps, sending ripples like the after-effects of ECT to bug up his beleaguered brain meats. Cutting straight through the messy high of cheap bumps. He’d delete them all without reading if he hadn’t once taught Mim a way to circumvent that. Why did he do that?

“Because you’re an idiot,” he says to himself, sucking up coffee in desperate gulps and trying to ignore the clamour in his head, drown it with anger and caffeine.

Shock has zero inclination to listen to Mim haranguing him about this freaking Olbax job ad infinitum, but he does want the buzzing to stop already, before his head does an impression of a melon on the receiving end of a baseball bat. Can’t have one without the other, and the resulting rebellion paradox is giving him more of a headache than Mim’s messages, or a baseball bat. Maybe.

“Not enough coffee in the world,” he snarls, giving up rebellion as a bad job. She’ll only keep on sending them. Mim’s tenacious. Like herpes.

The first message, from thirty-six hours ago, is fairly calm, more of a query. He’s not fooled. Calm before the storm, that shit is. And here’s the storm, from message four onward, ear-bending as feedback, full-on rant-mode and he’s cringing, trying to whip through them all without really listening.

If only Mim’s voice when she’s annoyed weren’t drill-like in its ability to put holes in his skull. By the time he comes to the last, sent roughly two hours ago, he’s ready to tear his drive out with his bare hands and stamp it to dust, but the last is a surprise.

Hey, Shocking boy, there’s a party tonight. You need to get out and about before you turn into a pumpkin. See you there.

He listens to it twice in swift succession, wondering who’s taken over Mim and what it is they want from him. She sounds almost nice. He shudders, full body.

“Gotta be a reason,” he mutters, staring furiously at his coffee cup. The dregs are grinning at him. What in the hell is so funny? “You’re empty. Bastard.”