Company Town (30 page)

Hwa swallowed. “Right.” She caught herself staring at his hands. “You should heal those up, though.”

“I don't know.” Síofra held his hands out in front of him. They shook slightly. Not a full-on palsied tremor, but just the smallest quiver. He clenched them, and blood beaded up in the cuts across his knuckles. Defensive wounds, they were called, in police reports. They were the reason you wore gloves in a boxing match. Because real fights did just as as much damage to you, most of the time, as they did to your opponent. “Sometimes it feels better not to let something heal.”

“That's true,” Hwa said, before realizing just how true it really was.

They were within sight of the exit doors, now. Joel was waiting. Síofra slowed his pace without completely stopping. He lowered his voice. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“What they wrote. On your mirror.”

It seemed like such a long time ago. And so trite. So amateur. Beaudry and the others had had some buddies wreck her place while she wasn't even there. It was intimidation, but nothing like what she and Joel had just witnessed in Whitechapel. Only maybe they were really all part of the same thing. Maybe that was how murders like that started. One day you were telling some woman how you were going to rape her and a few years later you were cutting her tits off and eating her kidneys.

Judging by the look on his face, Síofra already believed this to be true.

“Didn't seem important,” Hwa said.

Now Síofra did pull up short. It took Hwa a step or two to realize this, and when she turned around to face him, his face looked unbearably sad. “Not important?” he asked. “Not
important
?”

“Aye. Not really. Not in the grand scheme.”

“The grand scheme.”

Hwa shrugged. She looked at the floor. “Aye.”

On the floor, she saw his shoes come closer to hers. His had blood on them. So did hers. “Look at me.”

She looked. It was hard. She didn't know why it was so hard, only that meeting his gaze felt like keeping her eyes open in a snowstorm. It stung.

“Who was it,” he asked, “that taught you that something like that, that
a threat to your life,
wasn't important?”

And just as though she were staring unblinking into the winter wind, Hwa's good eye filled with tears. She blinked them away. Shook her head. Pulled her lips back into a grin. “What're you at, eh? You gonna do this dance again, if I tell you?”

“No.” Síofra took another step forward. When Hwa tensed up, he paused and backed away a little. He pitched his voice even lower. “No. I wouldn't do that. I don't hit women.”

Unbidden, Sabrina's face rose in her vision. And Layne's. And Calliope's. Was her mother next? Hwa squeezed her eyes shut.
Master control room,
she reminded herself.
Press the buttons. Flip the switches.

“New security protocols?” she heard herself ask.

“Oh, that.” He cleared his throat. “I brought Joel's suggestion to his father's attention. You'll be living with them from now on. And we have a brief you need to read, about the Homecoming dance.”

*   *   *

The dance took place on a viewpoint level of Tower Four. Each hour, the whole floor would make a single revolution, so couples at tables could see both the city and the ocean. This was by far its lowest-tech feature. The Synth-Bio Club had engineered all manner of plants and animals just for the occasion: grabby little tentacular vines that climbed up the walls, twirling maple keys that danced and spun in the air like pixies and spiralled up from whatever surface they touched, butterflies that dampened signal by flapping their Faraday wings.

None of the students really noticed. They were too busy miming anal on the dance floor.

“A Homecoming at New Arcadia Secondary.” Hwa stood on a balcony overlooking the action. She waved expansively at the crowd. “You may never find a more wretched hive of—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it.” Joel smirked. “We agreed to hate this equally, remember? Let's go upstairs.”

Upstairs was the corporate event. The music was quieter, and it came from instruments played by human hands. The guests weren't really dancing so much as clustering as far away as possible from the dance floor. Partners and investors and developers of interest to the Lynch family had all been invited to see how this whole experiment in urbanism was getting along. When Hwa toggled over to one layer of vision, all she saw were brand identities communing with each other over tiny egg tarts sprinkled with chives.

Zachariah had a big announcement planned. Hwa had no idea what it was. When Joel had asked, his father only replied with the coy “That would be telling.” Most likely it had to do with Project Poseidon. Why else would Zachariah have invited so many people, and many media presences?

“Zachariah's really done something special, here,” Hwa heard a woman say to a group of robots who looked like Dr. Mantis, as they entered the other party. Emerald green feathers appeared to grow from her scalp. Hwa had no idea if they were real or not. “Shame he won't be around to see it all come to fruition.”

Hwa steered Joel away from the conversation. “Whose flesh do you have to press?” Hwa asked.

“Well, the designer of my implants is here,” Joel said. “I should probably say hello.”

“Fine. Let's do that. Where is he?”

Joel nodded over to their right. “He's standing next to that woman with the red hair.”

Hwa didn't need to look. She looked anyway. Eileen stood beside a short man in a tux, listening attentively and smiling. She looked a little rounder than usual. Tired. Like she didn't have the time or inclination for proper food. When she saw Hwa, her smile fell a little. Oblivious, Joel pushed forward across the dance floor with his hand outstretched.

“Hi, Dr. Carlino,” he said.

The doctor lit up when he recognized Joel. Literally. Something in his eyes flashed a bright gold. They reminded Hwa of Dr. Mantis's eyes, and she wondered if he'd gone all the way—cameras in both eyes, not just the one. When he focused on her and she saw his pupils dilate sideways, she knew he had.

“Hello, Joel! I was hoping to see you this evening. And this is the bodyguard, yes? The organic one?”

Hwa squeezed his warm, damp, fleshy hand. “That's me. Go Jung-hwa. Nice to meet you.”

“What a wonderful specimen you are, my dear.” Dr. Carlino refused to let go of her hand until Hwa forcibly removed it. The blush spreading up into his vanishing hairline was going absolutely nowhere, though. He gestured at her. “You must be so proud of all this.”

Hwa didn't know if he was talking about her outfit or the body it covered. She wasn't particularly proud of either. They were both temporary. “I work out,” she said, finally.

“Oh, no, my dear, I meant your genome.” Dr. Carlino plucked the air around her like a faith healer doing a cold read. “It's so … pristine. Intact. No edits. No augments. Pure and simple and austere. Almost, dare I say it,
zen.
”

Whatever part of Eileen that still thought of Hwa as a friend must have activated on autopilot, because she quickly put her hand on Dr. Carlino's arm before Hwa could give him a piece of her mind. “I'm a little thirsty. Can we get you two some drinks?”

“Sure,” Hwa said. Eileen was one of the few people in the room she'd trust to pour her anything. “Club soda for both of us.”

Eileen pointed to the dance floor. “Just so you know—”

“Is that your mom?” Joel asked. “Dancing with Daniel?”

“There. Now you know,” Eileen said, and followed Dr. Carlino.

Hwa was dreaming, and this was a nightmare. She was derealizing, and this was a seizure. She was dead, and this was Hell. A Hell of perfunctory jazz standards and crudités and an eternity spent watching her mother grinning at her from over her boss's shoulder as she ran one gem-studded hand up and down his back.

“I want to go downstairs,” Hwa said.

“She looks nice,” Joel said. “That gold colour really suits you both. Of course, hers is the whole dress, and yours are just the pearl buttons on that catsuit, but—”

“Hwa-jeon!”

Some in the crowd paused to glance at Sunny. Sunny ignored them. She lifted her hand from Daniel's shoulder and gestured for Hwa to come forward. Hwa's feet had no desire to move. None whatsoever. And yet they were moving, perhaps steered toward her mother by Joel. Abruptly they came to a stop, and Joel offered his hand to Sunny.

“Hi. I'm Joel Lynch. Hwa is my protection. I'm very happy to meet you.”

Her mother shook Joel's hand. “How nice to meet you, Joel! I'm Go Sun-hwa. Most people call me Sunny.”

Customers,
Hwa added silently.
Punters. Marks. Not friends.

“Are you having a good time?” Joel asked.

“Oh, it's just a
beautiful
party,” Sunny gushed. “You've just out
done
yourselves.”

The creeping nausea that always assailed Hwa each time her mother opened her mouth climbed up from her belly to her throat and began tightening its grip. Why did she have to be here, with him? The payday from events like these was never small. She didn't need to bother Síofra. She could find some other sorry sap to cling to without any issue. She had chosen Síofra because she knew he worked with Hwa.

“May I please cut in?” Joel asked.

“Eh?” Hwa and her mother said, in unison.

“You don't mind, do you, Daniel? I just want to learn more about Hwa straight from the horse's mouth, as it were. You'll dance with her, won't you?”

“Naturally,” Síofra said, and took Hwa's hand before she could protest. And then Joel and her mother were drifting away, her mother scowling at her from across an ever-widening gulf of marble floor and good breeding. And Síofra was gently trying to lead her. “Relax,” he kept saying. “They'll be fine. I'm keeping an eye on him, too.”

Hwa kept her eyes pinned to his chest. “I'm sorry. I haven't really danced since I was, like, ten. People don't really get in my space unless I'm sparring them, or fighting them.”

“Is that what it is?” He seemed to be adding something up in his mind, like calculating his share of a long, awful, complicated bill. His fingers played absently with the stays at Hwa's back. They were what really held the whole suit together, Séverine had told her. The pearl buttons—real golden South Seas sewn directly into the dark leather—were just for show. “Nobody's ever come this close without hurting you first? That's why you flinch?”

Mute, Hwa nodded.

“You're not flinching now.”

She shook her head.

“Well. That's something.” He did something with their hands that made their fingers enlace, and his other arm tighten around her. “They're playing our song.”

It took her a few bars to identify “Ain't That a Kick in the Head,” and she laughed despite herself. He spun her out, and then spun her in, closer this time. Surprising, how easy that was.

“See, that wasn't so hard,” he said, as though having read her mind. “All you have to do is trust me.”

Hwa had nothing to say to that. But his grip stayed tight.

“Your mother nicknamed you after a dessert I've always wanted to try,” he said. “Hwa-jeon, I mean. I was in Pyeongyang in the winter, and my hosts told me the fresh flowers were what made the pancakes best. That I should wait until they bloomed.”

Hwa peered up at him. Odd, how his face could open and close like that. How she could climb right into the soft warmth of that gaze and make a nest in there, if she wanted. “Who are you, really?”

He smiled. “She speaks. You know who I am. I'm Daniel Síofra. Pleased to meet you. Who are you?” He spun her out. Spun her close.

“Tell me what you saw in Lynch's crystal ball.” It was worth a shot. And he had asked her, once. Somehow she wished she'd told him when she had the chance.

His head tilted. “Have you been looking at my file?”

“Your file is redacted,” Hwa said. “Completely. Why is that?”

That same look of defeat crossed his face that she'd seen when he watched the glitch at the shooting for the first time. His mouth worked. “Hwa…”

“Are you vulnerable? Hackable? Like a skullcap?”

“Hwa.” He bent double. Hwa caught him. Held him. “Hwa. Something's wrong.”

“What's wrong? Headache?”

He straightened. Smiled. “No. Not at all, Miss Go.”

Ice ran down her spine. He didn't sound like himself. What had the old witch under the bridge said, about piloting a skullcap? “Hey,” Hwa whispered. “Say me name, b'y.”

“Go.” His head shook. His fingers curled around her shoulders. Like he was holding tight to the tiller on a roiling sea. “Go Jung-hwa.
Jung-hwa-sshi.
”

“That's it,” she said. “There we go.”

“Hwa, there's something very wrong with me,” Síofra whispered. “Oh, Christ, Hwa, I'm—”

Something light and wet glanced off her left shoulder. Hwa smelled something sweet. A champagne flute shattered near her. Gasps followed. Whispers. Tittering laughter. Hwa turned. She almost didn't recognize the figure at first. Her mind was on Síofra. But in the centre of the dance floor was Mr. Moliter, and he was very, very drunk. Drunk enough to throw a champagne flute at her head and miss badly, anyway. How had he gotten up to this level? Did they let the Homecoming chaperones drink?

Silently, she put herself between Síofra and Moliter.

“You.” Her old teacher pointed at her. “You don't got anything worth selling on the open market, so you take it out on everyone else.” Moliter shuffled around the dance floor like a rolling sack of rotten potatoes. His pointing finger wagged at her. He grinned his big, drunk, shit-eating grin, the same one he sometimes wore when Hwa dropped Eileen off at his place. “Girl with a face like that in a town like this, with so much pussy for sale, doesn't stand a chance—”