Company Town (22 page)

Hwa reached over and squeezed his shoulder. She smiled at the other Lynches. She again thought about how quickly she could kill them. “You got me there, Joel. You got me there.”

*   *   *

Later, she wheedled an overnight invitation out of Joel. It was after the sorbet and cheeses, when the older siblings and their partners were all doing cognac and coffee, and Hwa was checking her homework against Joel's, and it was getting on toward 22:00.

“It's silly for me to go all the way back to One,” she said carefully. Joel was trying to juggle, as he paced the length of his room. The juggling wasn't going well. The pacing he was fine at. “We're just going to school in the morning anyway. And Síofra isn't in town for me to run with. I have a spare uniform at school, so that's not a problem.”

“You should just come live here,” Joel said, watching the balls in the air. “I know you're still technically on probation, but I think it would be better if you lived here.”

Hwa frowned. “Better how?”

“Well, more efficient. We have the same schedule. And it would be safer.”

Until now, Hwa hadn't noticed any sign that Joel might be nervous about the death threats. But that didn't mean he wasn't. “Are you worried about stuff like that?”

Joel gave her a completely disdainful look that, for once, made him look fifteen and not fifty. “I didn't mean safer for
me,
” he said. “I meant safer for
you
. Daniel says that the Tower One security isn't nearly good enough.”

Hwa snorted. “You want me to be a Fiver like you guys, eh?”

“Would that be so bad?”

Hwa didn't answer. She couldn't imagine living this way. The moment she finally got used to it, it would all be taken away for one reason or another. And she would be afraid of that eventuality, all the time, and so she'd never be used to it, would always be waiting for the other shoe to drop. So it was better to stay where she was. But she couldn't possibly explain all that to Joel.

After Joel was in bed, Hwa relaxed somewhat. She listened for the other Lynches to leave, until it was just Zachariah and the softbot that followed him around. Hwa wasn't even sure the old man slept normal hours. Then she heard the steady rhythm of his machine, and knew he was down for the count.

Even so, she waited another hour just in case. By then both Joel and his father were sleeping soundly. They breathed in synchronicity, the old man and the boy, even across the flat. Joel must have grown up hearing the sound of his dad's iron lung. Maybe by now it was a comfort. Better than the alternative. For the first time, Hwa wondered what would happen to Joel if the old man died soon. Which of the assholes at the salt table would be his legal guardian? It seemed like a reasonable concern, and yet no one had brought it up to her. Did the old man really think he was going to live forever?

Hwa rolled herself off the smart cushion beside Joel's bed, took the boy's watch, and made for the old man's study.

The door opened for Joel. As she entered, his content shimmered down from the ceiling. The room itself was blank, aside from a vintage lucite desk, a white tulip chair, and something on a white marble pedestal, shrouded with a square of blue velvet. The crystal ball. For a terrible moment, Hwa had the urge to look into it again. See how it worked. Figure out the trick to it. Because it had to be a trick. A special effect. A prop. It could not be real.

Her hand dropped. No. Not again. She had things to do.

She took a seat at the desk. In a groove inset into the top of the desk was a single stylus. It was very light, and etched with the image of a serpent with a crown on its head hatching from a large egg. It was made of bone.

DANIEL SÍOFRA, she wrote on the desk.

Síofra's profile effervesced into the air. It was far more detailed than anything Hwa had access to. Performance reviews. (
“Mr. Síofra seems very concerned with learning proper procedure in all things; he prides himself on knowing the best way to accomplish any task.”)
Pictures of him at every Lynch event with highlights of who he'd spoken to and for how long. Long logs of bio-data: heart rate, brainwaves, temperature, sleeping patterns, calories in, calories out.

Brain scans.

X-rays.

Images of a burned body.

Hwa covered her mouth to keep the moan inside.

“We did our best with him.” Hwa whirled. There in the door stood Zachariah's softbot. It glided in, buoyant, deflated arms trailing at its sides. “Yes,” it added, after a pause for breath in the other room. “I can direct this device from my ventilator.”

Hwa looked around the room. Shit. “I was just—”

“You were curious about Daniel. That's natural. A young woman like you. He's very attractive.”

“It's not like that,” Hwa said.

“He keeps a close eye on you, too. A little mutual surveillance is,” another pause for breath, “only fair.”

Hwa swallowed. There was nothing for it. Short of asking the old man if he'd blown up the Old Rig, she would never find the answers she was looking for this way.

“Sorry about this. It was stupid. I shouldn't have done it. I don't know what I was thinking.”

She stood up from the desk, put the bone stylus back, and made for the door. The softbot swerved in front of her. She wondered what it would take to puncture it. She'd played with a hugbot, once, during the process of diagnostic therapy for her seizures. It was a tough old thing, built to take a beating, and this looked much the same. It regarded her with soft blue eyes. They spun independently of each other.

“What did you think you would find here, Miss Go?”

Without meaning to, Hwa glanced at the images hanging and twisting in the air above the desk. The specs of machinery. Two deep brain implants. Neural mesh along his spinal column. Labs on chips synthesizing custom drugs on demand. As she watched, the implants and the mesh and the chips faded away, replaced by the original scans of his injuries. Then they assembled themselves. The machines inside him built themselves up, then rebuilt him from within. She watched his metamorphosis over and over. It was total, and it was magnificent. Whoever Síofra was before, Lynch had put him back together piece by piece, including large segments of his brain. And they'd built him better than he was before.

“I was just thinking,” she said carefully, “how much we could have used this kind of technology when the Old Rig blew up.”

“Yes, that was tragic,” Zachariah said, with the softbot's gentle voice.

Hwa swung her gaze back to him. “My brother died that day.”

“I know,” Zachariah said. “And I am sorry.”

Hwa's lips felt hot. Her throat began to close. “What are you sorry for?”

The softbot's limp arms filled slightly and rose in an approximation of a shrug. “At my age, the list of my regrets is much too long.”

“Do you regret not buying this town sooner?”

Both the softbot's eyes brightened and dilated. She was being focused on. She stared hard into the blue light.

“Did you want to buy it, sooner?” she heard herself ask. “
Before
the Old Rig blew up?”

From the other room, she heard a rough, awful sound. Laughter. Dry and dying and slow. Zachariah could barely breathe. But he could still be amused. The softbot's head manifested a giant happy face.

“Pay no mind to gossip, Miss Go,” Zachariah said. “This city was already dead long before that day. Now it is resurrected. Much as our friend was,” a wet, sucking breath, “ten years ago.”

“Ten years ago? Not…” She forced the words out. “Not three?”

“Oh, my dear Miss Go.” One of the softbot's arms filled and rose and gestured at Síofra's profile. “Mr. Síofra is very special to me. My hopes for him are quite high. I would never allow him to risk his life in any meaningful way. Not after I invested so much in building it.”

One of the arms slithered over her shoulders. “My hopes for you are similarly high.” He breathed, and the tubing of the softbot's arms curled around her neck. The pressure was very gentle but very real. Her neck and throat were still sore enough to magnify it. “You are two of a kind, you and he. A man without a past and a woman without a future. You want to have a future, don't you, Miss Go?”

Mute, Hwa nodded.

The coil around her neck squeezed softly. Right where the sole survivor of the Old Rig had squeezed. “You want to share our future with us, don't you? With Joel? And Daniel?”

She shut her eyes. “Yes.”

Now the pressure was definite. She fought to take deep breaths. “We've invited you deep into our world. Deeper than we've allowed outsiders. This is a family business, Miss Go, and you are not family.”

“I know that.”

“But you are valuable, in your own way. Unique. Rare. I like rare things. I like having the best. Are you the best?”

He could squeeze the life out of her, right here and right now. “Goddamn right I am,” she choked out.

The tubing slipped away from her neck. Air rushed into her lungs. “Then I think you should go back to Joel's room, don't you?”

She was out of the room before she could agree. When she entered, Joel rolled over and his eyes blinked open. He sat up. “Where's all the blood?” he asked.

“Eh?”

“He shot you. There should be blood.”

Hwa frowned. She waved a hand in front of Joel's face. His eyes didn't track the movement. They leaked sudden tears. Hwa wiped them away carefully. She felt something inside realign itself, like a joint popping back into place. “You're still asleep,” she said gently. “Lie back down.”

Joel did so, but his body remained stiff and his eyes stayed open. Hwa tested his forehead with the backs of her fingers. No fever. She sat beside him on the bed. “Close your eyes.”

“He shot you. I saw it.”

“You're dreaming, Joel. I'm right here. I'm fine.” She reached over and pushed a hand through his hair. Joel's eyes closed. His body went slack. She scratched her fingers across his scalp. Under her nails, she felt the scars where his implants had gone in. “I'm alive. And I'm not going anywhere. I'm not leaving you.”

 

12

Aviation/Metabolist

“So,” Hwa said. “You've done some succubus play, right?”

The Aviation was alive with jazz. Violet light streamed across the black-and-white chequered floor. In the centre of the room, the bar rotated slowly. One revolution an hour. Hwa had counted three revolutions. She had lost track of how many bourbons that meant. Or which of the very specialized types she'd been drinking. Probably all of them.

Layne sipped her drink. “Sure, like once or twice. It's super rare, though. Like it's a thing they try once and don't really go back to, unless they
some
like it. What are you at?”

“Where did you get the suit?” Hwa gestured at herself. “For being invisible.”

“Oh, my God. You don't need to be
invisible,
Hwa. Get over yourself.”

“No, it's not like that,” Hwa said, for the second time in as many days. “I don't…”
I don't want to be invisible,
she should have said, but the words were harder to get out than she expected.

“Besides, it's fucking tough to rent that shit,” Layne said. “Like, it's super regulated. Like worse than guns. Which is kind of sad. Background checks and everything. They're woven with smart sensors; if you rent one, the person you rented it from knows where the suit is every minute.”

“Could you buy one?”

“Yeah, a shitty one. Not the good stuff. The military stuff costs.”

“But if I wanted to buy the military stuff.”

Layne looked at Hwa as though she were extremely stupid. “Then go to the Lynches! They have a whole Security branch, right? Don't you work for them?”

“I'm in another department,” Hwa said. “I file reports to Security, but I'm a…” She struggled to find the right phrase. “Discretionary hire.”

“Well, if anybody has that stuff, it's them. I even heard them joking about it. Or Eileen did. I think she's the one what told me about it.”

Hwa said nothing. She'd tried to ping Eileen, just to talk, and had even tried to explain why she'd gone back to working for the Lynches, but nothing came of it. Eileen had written her off. Completely. And Layne knew it. Everyone knew it. And it was awkward and awful as hell.

“What else is going on at work?”

Oh, not much, they just blew up this town so they could build a star in the ruins
.

“They're making me go to Homecoming,” Hwa said. “With Joel. They're sponsoring it.”

“Don't look so sad! You can handle it. It's just a dance.”

Layne looked sleepy. It was late. Her flapper costume was fading. She'd rented the look for only a few hours, and now her pearls flickered in Hwa's specs.

“It's the whole principle of the thing,” Hwa said. “I don't dance. Sunny dances. I don't dance.”

“Who is Sunny?”

“Never mind.”

“Do you mean your mom? Wasn't your mom a dancer?”

“
No.
She was in a girl group, and the
group
danced, in videos. But she wasn't, like, a
dancer.
She wasn't an artist, or something. She was just following orders.”

Layne brushed her pink hair aside and stared at Hwa hard through the veil of way too many brandy Alexanders. “Go Jung-hwa.” She pointed. “You hate your mother.”

Hwa shrugged. “So? The feeling's mutual.”

“What did she do when you moved out?”

“Nothing,” Hwa said. “I mostly moved out three years ago, anyway. She was probably just glad to get the last little bit over with. She'll have another closet, now. That's why I had to share a room, growing up. Because she needed a whole other bedroom just for all her sexy shit.”