Escapology (20 page)

Shock’s chest shrinks to a tight point. Fucking Mim, shoving him into a dead-end and calling it a way out. When did he get so
stupid
? He rubs his eyes, trying to ignore how his knuckles come away damp.

Then I have no choice.

That’s right. And you
are
a lucky boy, because if you promise to be good, I’ll make an effort to keep protecting you.

An effort…?

I might not be able to save you in the long term, Shock, but I’ll keep you alive long enough to deliver.

Fine. Nope, not fine, but clear enough. Clear as a glass to the fucking face.

So what am I getting from Core?

Emblem.

Shock rests his face in shaking palms, suddenly exhausted. Yeah, if there’s one thing in Core a megalomaniac like Twist might want to get his greasy fingers on, and waste a fuckton of Haunts to do so, it’d be Emblem. That’s the pipe dream right there—control Emblem, control Slip, control
everything
. The fucking motherlode no one’s ever dared to try for because you’d have to be
really
stupid or
really
sure.

How in hell does Twist expect Shock to pull this off? Even with all these fancy extras it’s a job so complex it’s more like a kamikaze mission. He’ll be in Hive, vulnerable to the Queens, not just for seconds, but for full minutes’ worth of seconds, every ticking one of them a doorway through which disaster could erupt no matter how much he prepares, or how clever he is.

And what if the Queens manage to take Emblem from him? What could they do with it? What couldn’t they? The same goes for Emblem in Twist’s possession. Either scenario makes Shock’s gorge rise. He can’t do this. Cannot. Shock didn’t even know he had a line, but here it is.

What am I, a fucking wizard? A fucking idiot? You know what the Queens will do with that. What they’ll do to
me.

Twist laughs at him again.
Choice, Shock. Where’s yours precisely?

I won’t do it.

Then I’ll use Joon, and I’ll kill you in ways you can’t imagine. I’ll remake you a fucking girl before I do it. That how you want to die, Shock? I know it’s not how you wanted to live. What it comes down to is, one way or another, I’m getting Emblem. You can do it and stay alive, die clean with some fucking dignity. Or you can continue refusing.

Can he refuse? Shock looks down at himself. Tries to imagine what it will be like to have taken away what he worked so hard and suffered so long to make right and understands it will break him into tiny pieces, each one a symphony of pain. He should be brave enough to face that, to do the right thing, but Twist is right. He’s craven.

It’s not only that he’s suffered too much to cope with more, it’s that he doesn’t—can’t—care about anyone else. Numero uno is the only number he gives a shit about. If he doesn’t, who will? Besides, if he says no, Joon might say yes. What then? What would his attempted morality mean at that point? Nothing.

I’m going to need some things I can’t afford.

Twist doesn’t bother crowing. Why would he need to?

You’ll get a decent wedge of flim for whatever you need delivered to the same P.O. you gave to Sez. But that’s all you’re getting. Apart from maybe to live.

How long do I have? You said I’m on the clock here.

About forty-eight hours. If we’re lucky.

Forty-eight hours to get enough virtual gear together to crack Hive, sneak into Core and hook Emblem out from under Queen noses. It’s not long. And if he survives that? Life sentence? Death? If he’d known he’d fuck up this hard, he’d have dropped out long ago, found any way at all to hang on where he felt happiest. Even sell his arse to whomever the fuck might want it.

At least he’d actually be there, instead of just dreaming about it. He still dreams of Sendai every night. Dreams his happiness is there, waiting for him after all these years, like a pound of diamonds in a security box. He’ll never know if he was right. The thought is bright, sudden pain, a burst of it, like raw chilli rubbed in a wound. He wants to curl around it, hold on, as if doing so can numb the agony. Instead, he takes his medicine.

Two days. Got it.

When you have Emblem you’ll be able to ditch the signal. It’ll degrade once used, so be careful about your entry and exit. Don’t want to accidentally alert anything Queen-like, do we now?

Where do I upload Emblem?

In my vault. Nowhere else. You fetch it, you bring it to me. Understood?

Understood.

And Twist’s gone, leaving a hole in Shock’s head big enough to lose the Gung in, aching and ringing like head trauma. He’s so fucking stupid. 0.5%? What exactly does it mean to be in that top half of a percent if he’s too dumb to see the obvious? Too idiotic to know when he’s being duped, even by the woman who made a hobby out of duping him.

Shock clutches his head. Oh hell but he needs sleep so very badly, needs a serious hit too, something strong. Pity he’s only got cheap shit. Pressing as many as he dares into his neck he drags himself off the stool. No time for sleep. Forty-eight hours is all he has and there are things he’ll need.

’Scrapers drooling around him in sticky S-driven coils, he staggers down the street, heading for his P.O. to fetch Twist’s flim. He feels alienated, the world something happening about a million miles away from him. But he can feel it zooming toward him, relentless, wearing an Oni mask with a saw-toothed grin big enough to gobble him up; and he walks faster and faster, hoping to outdistance it.

“You sleeping, Sez?”

Back from her Imping vacay as Unity Jo-Charbonneau, Mim closes the door of her apartment and strides through into the bedroom. Beholds Johnny Sez, cuddled up to his pillow, snoring and drooling. Urg. She is
not
sleeping in that bed until every scrap of linen has been boil-washed. Bodies. So goddamn gross. Why do they leak so much? She lifts a deliberate leg, clad in a sleek, black blader, and kicks him in the head.

“Wake up.”

Johnny groans, shoves her away without opening his eyes.

“Shit, Mim,” he slurs, “you have appallin’ timin’.”

“For real?
I
have appalling timing? Wow, you need to wake up.”

She reaches down and grabs his leg, yanking him half out of bed. He tries to pull back, shake her off. Mim hisses and tugs again, hard, until his arse thumps onto the floor.

“Ow. Fuckin’
ow
, bitch. What, no hello?”

Mim leans down right to his ear.

“Who’s been in my house, Sez? Someone’s been in my fucking house who shouldn’t have been. And I’m not talking about you, you freeloading little fucking donkey shit.”

He rubs his face, still half asleep and obviously on the come down from some serious trippage. He better have used his own money this time or he’s going to find himself homeless. Possibly skinless.

“What you sayin’?” He blinks up at her stupidly.

His eyes are bright blue. Almost periwinkle. That’s what she liked about him. Never as blue as the first blue eyes to slaughter her. She had to make them bluer in the end to preserve herself, and that was a mess. Mim hates mess. She hates cleaning it up, getting her hands dirty, and you can’t cleanse the filth of emotional mess. That’s why this time she chose the eyes, and not the boy behind them. She grabs his chin and forces him to look through the archway at the rest of her apartment.

“See that?” she snaps. “Do you see?”

“See what? It’s clean. I cleaned.”

Mim raises a brow, scanning the room with cold, mirrored eyes.

“That’s a whole other story, slim. But your paltry efforts don’t hide the fact that people were here who shouldn’t have been.” She turns back to him, moves her hand from chin to ear and tweaks until he squeaks. “Who were they?”

“Fucking hell, Mim.” He yanks his ear out of her pincered fingers. “OW!” He glares at her, all his hurt in those ocean-blues. Good. Hurt she knows. Hurt she can deal with. “Harmonys, okay? It was the Harmonys. And I woulda told you anyway. They want a word.”

Mim laughs out loud.

“About time. I’ve been flirting about as hard as is possible without clueing in Twist.”

“What?”

“Not very bright this morning, are we? This thing I helped Twist with.
Everyone
’s interested in it. I want to find out why and I want in, and Twist doesn’t do partnerships. The Harmonys do, if you don’t get on the wrong side of Li.”

Johnny struggles up from the floor.

“I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Dullard.”

She strolls off to the kitchen, bladers thumping the floor. She has this thing about cleaning, except when it comes to boots on feet. Therein lies a trade-off. Worry about dirt from boots, or worry about bare feet or worse, sweat-drenched socks, all over the damned floor? Either way she’d get the hideous twitchies about what might be growing in the cracks of her floor, adhering to the soles of her feet, growing, maybe getting into her blood stream and
multiplying
—so boots it is.

The compromise balances on one hard clean at the end of a day and various low-level tidies if boots trample more dirt than the mind can handle. That’s how she knew uninvited guests had been in her apartment. Sez vacuumed, sure, but he didn’t
vacuum
. Their dirt is everywhere.

Shoving his feet into untied boots because he knows the house rules, Sez traipses after her.

“You’re gonna fuck Twist over?”

He’s flabbergasted, jaw hanging and everything. He looks as gormless as when he drools in his sleep and Mim looks away before it puts her off the coffee she’s brewing, or him, which would be worse.

“Where’s the harm? He’d fuck me over in a heartbeat. Less. Besides, I’m done now, and he did not stipulate
silence
in my contract. Fine print, Sez, you should read it.”

Sez grabs a string of twisted blue candy from a jar on Mim’s kitchen shelf. If she took a moment to appreciate the themes in her life, her apartment, she might hate herself, which is why Mim never thinks about it. You act and you move on, or you grind to a halt. Mim has no time for baggage. Not even her own.

“He’ll have you Cleaned.” Sez takes a cavalier bite of the candy and raises a brow at her. “You’re not invincible. Not invisible like Shock. You won’t escape.”

Mim snatches the candy and bites a mouthful from the other end.

“I’ll be working with the Harmonys, idiot. They’ll protect me.”

“Only as long as you’re useful.”

“I’m always useful.”

* * *

Li is addicted to coconut cake, which is why the Harmonys hold court at one of Shimli’s tiny, secret coffee houses. Apart from them, the place is deserted. Mrs Tan, the coffeehouse proprietor, doesn’t seem to care. With her prices, why would she? As Mim strolls in Li waves her cake enthusiastically, spilling crumbs everywhere.

“There you are! Look, Ho, she came.”

Ho nods, eyes on his long fingers, busy constructing a purple psy. From the sheer, painstaking concentration on his face, he could be attempting to construct an origami lotus small enough to fit on the head of a pin.

“I see,” he murmurs.

Li switches so fast it gives Mim psychological whiplash, shooting Ho a glance that could strip the skin from an elephant and burn it.

“You don’t. You don’t see. You’re not even looking. Brat.”

She switches again. Lightning fast. Beams at Mim.

“Sit. Have cake.”

“Coffee?” shouts Mrs Tan from behind the prow of her gargantuan service desk, magnificent walnut with marquetry depicting a war between dragons over a glowing ball of wisdom. The whole cafe is decorated the same. It gives Mim migraines.

“Please,” Mim yells back. “Triple shots. And don’t give me dregs this time, old woman. Last time I was picking grounds out of my teeth for hours.”

Mrs Tan throws back her head laughing as she disappears into the kitchen, and Li shakes her head, sharing a conspiratorial glance with Mim.

“That woman,” she says. “Wicked. Wants me to whack Yang for her. In good time I might, if I’m feeling playful. Isn’t life grand?”

“If you say so,” says Mim, taking a forkful of the cake Li generously served her and groaning as she eats. “Dear heaven, that’s perfect.”

“Usefulness,” Li responds, running as ever completely off piste. “If you can be useful, you can get away with a great deal. But if you can be
indispensable
, oh then my dearest Mim, you can get away with
anything
.”

“Which am I?”

Li considers her for a moment, lips pursed.

“Verging on useful, if you’ve come here for the reasons I’m assuming.”

“This business with Twist,” Mim replies, thanking Mrs Tan as she plunks a cup of thick, black coffee at her elbow and another beside Li’s plate, taking her empty cup away. “I’ve been watching his almost profligate use of Haunts and wondering what on earth he’s been using them for. Then he asks me to contact my Shocking boy for him, get him to help me on a job so Twist can tag him. Twist obviously wants him for whatever these other Haunts have failed to do, but he sounds confident, which makes me think Shock is his eureka.”

“Correct. What pains Ho and I so very much is that Twist isn’t going to share, and we don’t like children who won’t share their toys.”

“And what toy would that be?”

Li drops a cube of sugar in her coffee. Considers the ripples for a long moment, smiling.

“The prize in Twist’s Haunt tombola, my dearest little Mimic,” she says eventually, “is Emblem.”

Sipping slowly at her coffee, Mim searches for signs of amusement in Li’s face, or Ho’s. Trouble is, both are psychopathic, thus have no facility for real emotion. Expressions on those stone-like countenances appear worse than disingenuous, they inspire real horror: Oh look the spider is trying to smile. Mim licks her lips, worried. How does one anticipate a test when one is sat opposite what are, despite all that human meatiness and blood, automata?

Disadvantage doesn’t suit Mim, it makes her itchy. If this is not a joke, then she’s into something
huge
. This could be
it
, her break into the big time. Her ticket out of Shimli. Mim wants everything, including a penthouse in the Heights, the most exclusive address in Foon Gung. Nothing less will do. She never understood Shock settling for Sendai. The biggest names, the very wealthiest, the WAMOS elite, they don’t do the Garden District. It’s not expensive enough.