Company Town (18 page)

“Um…” Hwa scratched the back of her neck. “I don't have any … You know, implants, or augments, edits, or whatever. So, I'm kinda in the dark, here.”

He groaned, like he was explaining something to his dotty old grandmother. “The
copyright,
” he said. “You want the augment, the subscription, you gotta pay the licensing fee. Or your provider does, if you're covered.”

“So? You can't bootleg a copy?”

“Sure. But your devices will report you. The toilets. The specs. Everything. There's random scans everywhere. And then, boom, a C-and-D and a big fine.” He leaned back in his chair. “Besides, it's bad for you. Serial replication error. A copy of a copy of a copy. You want a shitty knockoff unclogging your arteries from the inside? I don't think so.”

Hwa chose not to comment on the irony of Dixon Sandro making this particular argument. “Well, do you recognize them?”

“The machines? No. I can try running a match, though. It would take a while.” Sandro kept squeezing. Blood bubbled up between his fingers. He didn't notice. “Could I try building with them? I'd know more if I got my hands dirty.”

“Aye.” Hwa frowned. It had not occurred to her until now to ask this question, but it made sense to, here. “Do you know where I could find some good camouflage? Like real poltergeist shit. Army grade.”

“Lázló,” Sandro said, without hesitation. “He lives in this tower. Moves around, though, unit to unit. Paranoid.” Sandro spun a finger beside is temple.

“You know for sure he has a suit? Or a line on one?”

Sandro nodded. “I've bumped into him, wearing it.”

“Bumped into? Like you walked into him?”

Again, Sandro nodded. “He wears it all the time, see? Says he feels better with it on.”

“So how do you know he's there?”

“You don't.”

The hairs on Hwa's arms rose. “What if I wanted to talk to him?”

“Then you go to the elevator in the nine o'clock position, with a bunch of fresh chips and vinegar,” Sandro said. “And you wait.”

*   *   *

In the elevator court, she ran into Eileen. She was with Sabrina and two other women whose names Hwa couldn't remember. By the looks of things they were just getting started: the four men they were with were laughing and wrestling each other and making bets about who could flip who fastest.

They had no bodyguard.

Hwa missed her elevator and jogged over to the party. The men ignored her—filters, probably, or maybe they were just high—and Hwa sidled up to Eileen as casually as she could. “Everything okay here?”

Eileen startled. She started to smile, and then it fell from her face. She put it away like a summer dress after the first fall rain. “What do you care?”

Hwa frowned. “Excuse me?”

“Don't you have another job to get back to? One that pays better?”

Hwa's mouth worked. “What?”

“You said you were quitting,” Eileen hissed. “You told me, at Calliope's funeral, that you were quitting.”

“Well, yeah, but…” Hwa didn't know how to explain. She watched the elevator's display. It would be there soon, to take Eileen and her party away. “It's complicated.”

“No, it's not. It's not complicated at all. You've always wanted to leave this town, and now you're going to. Congratulations.”

“It's not like that,” Hwa said. “Really. It's not. I'm doing something important.”

“Oh, yeah, going to homeroom with Richie Rich. That's real important.”

Hwa looked down at the floor. The carpet had an odd pattern that ripped in her vision the longer she stared at it. Orange and pink and brown. It was astoundingly ugly, now that she really looked at it. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. You're doing what's best for you.”

Hwa swallowed. Her lips felt hot. Her eyes felt hot. “Youse don't have an escort.”

“Short notice. No other bodyguards on shift.”

Hwa nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

The elevator continued its journey downward. The guys in front of it—the clients, Hwa reminded herself—were doing leg-wrestling moves on the floor. Lifting their legs straight up in the air and entwining them and trying to flip each other over and insisting that they had no interest in fucking each other.

“We have to take what work we can get,” Eileen said. “They shut down another one of the pumps today. The riggers are leaving. We're losing clients.”

“The reactor will have workers,” Hwa said.

“Scientists. With families. Lunch-time Larrys. Not all-nighters.”

Fewer hours. Less pay. Less service. Lower fees. Eileen didn't have to say it. Hwa heard it just fine. The elevator chimed, and Sabrina jumped in to hold it open while the guys on the floor struggled to stand. Eileen adjusted her hair. Smoothed her dress. Inspected her nails.

“Anyway. It looks like you made the smart decision.”

And with that, she walked away. She was the last in the elevator, and one of the men looped his arm around her waist. She smiled at him, and kept her smile up when she turned back to Hwa. It was still plastered on her face when the elevator doors slid shut.

 

10

Viridian/
Angel from Montgomery
/ Nine o'Clock Elevator

“Again,” Hwa said. “Harder.”

Joel began another round of awkward kicks to the dummy. His range was improving; he couldn't get into the splits yet, but a daily practise of single-leg circles (clockwise and then anti-clockwise, breathing in as the foot swung away and out as it returned) was getting him to where he could do a respectable standing split and his legs could make a good ninety-degree angle with his body for about seven breaths at twelve beats each. His kicks would improve once he developed more muscle in the core and the legs, but his posture was still a problem. The kid's navel just didn't want to meet his spine.

“Your muscles are like a rubber band,” Hwa said, for what felt like the hundredth time. “Right now, they're fine. You got by this long without working them because they're young. But you have to work them, tighten them up—”

“Wouldn't working a rubber band
diminish
its elasticity?” Joel asked, as his kicks grew weaker. His leg was flopping around everywhere. Dumb kid was about to throw out his hip flexor and IT band. Again.

“Other leg. And yes. But I'm the one who knows this stuff, not you.”

He snorted, and sweat flew up into his hairline. “That's not much of an explanation.”

Hwa mimed playing a violin.

“I'm doing the Armstrong regimen when I'm done growing,” Joel huffed. His leg hammered the dummy. He held his breath tight inside his chest. She watched his shoulders begin their slow climb up to his ears. It was like his body could only do one thing at a time: breathe or kick. The air whooshed out of him in a single frustrated stream. “You know that, right? Once my muscles are done—”

“You have to
have
muscles, first, for the Armstrong regimen to work,” Hwa said. “Get into Pigeon.”

His leg fell. “What? Again?”

“Your hip flexor is still too tight.”

Joel looked around the rest of the gym. “It'll look really weird, in front of all these people.”

“Oh, yeah, because you were really a paragon of catlike grace right there.” Hwa nodded at the mat. “Do it.”

Joel muttered something and knelt down. He tucked one knee under himself, and stretched the other leg behind him. He was still too tight to stretch his ribs over his knees, or even rest his forearms on the floor.

“Shouldn't I be lifting weights, to gain muscle?”

“You can lift weights after you build your core. You need something to hold your spine in place before you start doing power-cleans. You're only fifteen. This is a building year, for you. Next year, you can start to sculpt.”

Next year. If he had a next year.

“Hey, Hwa!” From the other side of the gym, Coach Brandvold waved her over. Hwa jogged over, and stiffened when Brandvold greeted her with a hug. Brandvold was always giving hugs. It was weird. “How are you doing?”

Hwa was never sure what people really meant when they asked this question. It could mean any number of things:
How's the gunshot wound? Had any seizures lately? How are you getting along now that your brother's dead? What's your whore mother up to, these days?

“I'm good,” Hwa said. “I got a new apartment.”

“Oh, neat! Where?”

“1-07.”

“1-07?” Coach Alexander snorted. “Do they not pay you enough? Shit,
I
live on 1-13.”

Hwa shrugged. “I'm just trying to save money.”

Coach Alexander
hmm
'd in her throat, which was the noise she made when someone turned in an assignment late in Social Studies.

“You going to the game? Homecoming's … coming, I guess.”

“Nope. Sorry.”

Coach Brandvold elbowed her. “What about the dance?”

“I don't go to those things.”

“Won't you have to, if Joel goes?”

Hwa shuddered. Trapped with her detail on the community floor of Tower Two, constantly swatting away fairy-lights and standing in line for the washroom behind giggling girls whispering blowjob tips to each other was one of her visions of Hell.

“Let's hope it doesn't come to that.”

“How is Joel?” Coach Brandvold looked over her shoulder at him. Joel winced and gave Hwa a dirty look. “He's looking more flexible, lately.”

“He's making progress.” Hwa shrugged. “Anyway. I should get back to him.”

She made to leave, but Coach Alexander leaned over and whispered something at her. “Hey, Hwa. Is it true one of the other teachers here has a type?”

Hwa frowned. “A type?”

“You know,” Coach Brandvold said. “That someone else on staff would rather keep relationships … professional.”

Moliter. Someone had seen Moliter with Eileen. On a date. And now it was all over the school. Whoever was doing Hwa's old job was doing a shitty job of it.

“Couldn't say,” Hwa said, scratching the place on her face where Moliter's scar would be, and winked.

Both women laughed. Coach Alexander tapped her temple with two fingers and then pointed them at Hwa's specs. Instantly, her personal contact information popped up in Hwa's vision. “Let me know if you want someone to run with in the mornings,” she said. “We might as well, living so close.”

“Hey, don't leave me out!” Coach Brandvold shared her information with Hwa, too. Her profile fluttered in on little bird wings. “You should have a housewarming! I want to see your new place!”

Hwa ducked her head and began backing away toward Joel. “Okay. Thanks. I'll think about it.”

“You might actually have to buy furniture, if you have a housewarming,”
Síofra said, in her bones.
“Maybe even invest in some plates.”

“I have plates,” she muttered.

“You have one set of dishes that you picked up from the Benevolent Irish Society shop. Those don't count, just like those farmshare crates you stacked up against the wall don't really count as shelves.”

“I didn't realize you were an interior decorator,” Hwa said. “Not all of us have been earning Lynch wages for the past ten years.”

“True.”

“Besides, why should I invest in anything when it might be vaporized by this time next year?”

“It's an experimental reactor, Hwa, not the apocalypse. You can buy furniture. You're allowed to be comfortable.”

Ads for sofas blossomed up in her specs. Most of them were too big: apparently Síofra was only looking at furniture that fit his apartment, not her studio.

“You're shopping for your place, not mine.”

“Not at all,
” he said.
“I just want a chair that actually fits me when I come by.”

“You plan to come by a lot?”

Silence.

From the mat, Joel huffed air up at his curls. “Can I
please
get up, now?”

Hwa waved away the ads with a swipe of her hand. She focused on Joel. By now, he'd worked himself down on his forearms. “Yeah. Sure. You should—”

Another message popped up in her vision. Oh, boy.

“Hey. Síofra.”

“You can call me by my name, you know.”

“I can train Joel any way I want, right?”

“Within limits, yes. His father doesn't want him passing out or hurting himself, obviously.”

“But we don't have to work out in this gym?”

“No. In fact, I've told you numerous times that you should feel comfortable to use the company gym, in Tower Five.”

“The company gym is full of augmented assholes from Security,” Hwa said. “And they all have a staring problem.”

“All I ask is that you go to places where I can see you.”

“Okay. There's a boat that just pulled up. An old fishing trawler called the
Angel from Montgomery.
That's where we're going. And it's just about the safest place I know.”

*   *   *

Hwa marched them down a rusting flight of stairs and onto the pier. With the
Angel from Montgomery
had come the birds. They wheeled and squawked overhead. Hwa peered down into the pontoons. She hadn't been this close to the water in a long time. Not unless she counted going under the girders.

“Nobody's going to take me for ransom or something, are they?” Joel asked, glaring down at the sailors on the
Angel
's main deck.

Hwa smiled, but shook her head. “I've seen how these guys tip. Money's not a problem. And they like this town. This is a favourite stop, for them. They won't do anything that'll get 'em blacklisted.”