Escapology (29 page)

Daytime is hang time for Joon. She’s a night owl, or rather a night sea creature, her avi being a rockfish. Scorpaena. Ugly, scary-looking thing. She hates it, but refuses on principle to buy or build another. She’ll have seen the news for sure, the footage of his avis bursting IRL, so he’ll leave them in the limo. Still, Emblem is enough of a sparkly for her magpie eyes, and he needs her help. Not to become her newest acquisition, sold to the highest bidder. Why does she have to be his only option?

“Can’t catch a fucking break, can I?” he mutters, locked into worry over that feed and exactly how many people are after him right now, how easy he might be to catch all exposed like this. He’s only mildly surprised when Shark responds to the unpleasant thought-loop with a pronounced, and spine-wrenching, butt of the head to the back of his seat. Message is clear as the bruise no doubt brewing on his spine: Buck up.

Fair enough. Consider him bucked.

Puss parks up in front of Joon’s ’scraper, throwing their exclusion zone a little wider, in case of unwary drivers. Flipping up his hood, Shock checks all is clear and, pausing to calm Shark, who’s all manner of jittery about Shock leaving the safe enclosure of the limo, gets out, keeping a wary eye all around.

Dirty red plastic kanji up the side of Joon’s building translate to Garden Palace Court. All ’scrapers in Sakkura’s arse-end have equally grand names. They’ve changed hands multiple times, never enduring anything so useful as a re-vamp or name-change, and they’re always rammed with tenants. The poor, spikers, the desperate, or people like him and Joon—safe-housing in hellholes to steer clear of unwanted trouble, the sort that often plagues those working for the Gung’s criminal element.

Shock avoids the entrance. Walks to the narrow space at the side nearest, riddled with steep metal fire escapes, like spider webs in the cracks. Freezing water drips through the structure from overnight rainfall, and the metal stinks of rust, and the organic filth slimed in the joints. Not mud, not human waste, an accumulation of rot and surface mosses.

Keeping his hands off the filthy rails, he runs up, light-footed. Joon’s thankfully not too high, only on the eleventh floor. Shock steals in through the window, makes his way to her door and knocks. The silence tells him that she’s in.

“Joon,” he calls softly. “It’s Shock. Need a favour,
por favore
.”

The door is yanked open, and a large crossbow rammed into his face. Joon’s head is somewhere behind it, eyes on stalks, electrocution hair re-dyed slime green. Shock approves. He ducks away from the bolt.

“Ease up, Joon, I’m all cool.”

“Cool, not cold,” she snaps, jabbing the crossbow back at his face.

He holds up his hands, palm out.

“Cool is enough. I’m off-Slip, bitch. Cut off. No fucker can trace me, and they’ll take a while to re-catch my sig after I scarpered so hard and fast.” Tension creeps further into his shoulders as he speaks, knotting them to his spine. How long has he really got before he gets tracked? He might have just aped bravado to Joon, but truthfully he’s clueless. He needs to get back to the limo ASAP.

“There was a limo on the feeds. Where is it?” she asks, still too wary. Too damned slow. He loses patience.

“Scan, bitch. Just scan. You’ll see. Or not.”

She sniffs. “Stay put. I
will
shoot you.” Her eyes unfocus a touch. When they focus again, they’re not on him. She’s in Slip. Lucky bitch has an internal uplink. Expensive doohicky, involving invasive surgery. That’s the bit puts him off. She’s always scorned his squeamishness, citing the replacement of his vagina with a dick. Joon thinks that’s invasion of a far more nail-biting nature. She has no idea. It was fucking heaven. He’d do it again a million times over. And it’s one hell of a long way from chopping open your head for the sake of more tech.

After a moment, she snaps back. Nods.

“Neat trick. I assume it’s parked outside?”

“It is.”

“Best come in then.” The crossbow lowers and she jerks it inward, opening the door wide so he can slip through. “So,” she says as he passes, casual as a butt dropped onto sofa cushions. “Avis still in there?” He notes she hasn’t relinquished the bow, and makes a point to keep space between himself and the door.

“Classified.”

This
look
fleets across her face, sneaky as fuck the untrustworthy bitch, but to her credit she takes the block on the nose.

“Okay. Business then. What do you need?”

Shock shrugs. Diffident.

“Place to hide. Help getting help. Something. Anything. I mean, for fuck’s sake, they do not cover this crap in the manuals.”

“Truth. Well, don’t know what the hell you thought I could put on the table. Clueless in my first, last, and middle name on this one. You just pulled a trick I never imagined in my wildest fucking trips, and let me tell you I’ve ridden some crazy goddamn rides.” She’s full-on impressed.

“You don’t have a middle name.”

“Do. It’s Casey.” She throws herself into a chair; spider legs sprawled way out onto the carpet. Still holding the bow though. White knuckles showing a trace. Untrustworthy bitch.

He chokes back a laugh. “Casey?”

“Juniper Casey Shimura.”

“Mouthful.”

“Nothing on your full handle.”

“Fuck off. So, can you point me toward salvation of any stripe, Juniper Casey Shimura?”

“Don’t fuckin’ push me.”

He rolls his eyes.

“Sorry,
Joon
.”

She bites her lips, lifts a shoulder.

“Might…
might
… just know someone who can help.
Might
.”

“Okay, might. Got it. Who?”

She sighs. “Idiot. Can’t name names, can I? Not with a might. But I can take you.”

Here comes the suspicion.

“Where?”

“J-Hack underground.”

“They’ve got an underground?”

“Dude,” she replies scornfully, “of course they fucking have. You just never dirtied yourself looking for it.”

Shock’s heart is a pincushion these days. Every needle strikes clean and true, lodges inside. He’d prefer to think she’s wrong about the idea of him not dirtying himself, but that’s almost exactly how it’s been. He’s fixated on Sendai above all else. Used it as an excuse to steer clear of any affiliations, to be almost terminally life avoidant. Surely that’s some kind of disorder?

“Take me.”

“Take you,” she says. “Suuuuure. Eaaaasy. Let’s just go, hey? Right now!”

“Joon, for serious, I am hardcore in need. If there is any way you can do just that, minus the sarcasm infection, I would be eternally grateful. Might even be persuaded to be
in your debt.
”

She stares at him a long time, scathing, then unwinds from the sofa, tossing the bow onto the cushion.

“Fine. I’ll take you. But that’s it. Rest is up to you.”

It’s only then the knot in his shoulders begins to untie. She snags her coat from the bewildering sprawl of branches on a coat tree painted to look like a neon giraffe wearing a medusa wig.

“We’ll take the limo,” she says.

Joon near his avis? Fuck no.

“Er… not sure it’s safe for you.” He’s giving away intel on avi location, but it can’t be helped.

She purses her lips. “Your fucking Shark, amirite?”

“Yup.”

She shrugs. “Plan B. You’ll come on my bike, the limo stays here.”

“Can’t it follow?”

“Your Shark can drive?” She’s unconvinced.

“No,” he replies. “But my Octopus can.”

* * *

Sakkura’s an upright urban wasteland. Miles of jutting ’scrapers slowly rotting against dull grey sky. It rains here as much as it does over Korea-town, drenching everything. Flooding the poorly built bridges strung in ugly shades of dirty concrete between dilapidated blocks.

Shock keeps his head close to Joon’s back to avoid the perpetual spill of old rain as she whips past each bridge, the heavy throb of her bike engine coughing too loud in the quiet. It does no good, ice-cold drops of two-day-old rain strike square down the back of his jacket, straight through his thin tee, and onto his spine. Make him shiver uncontrollably.

It begins to rain again. A desultory spatter fast develops into full-on deluge. Joon utters a wind-snatched curse and strangles the throttle. She’s got this ancient cater-bike, like the ones they use for avis in J-Net. The engine belches black smoke, and the cat-track tears at the tarmac like scrabbling hands, spraying them both with loose grit. They pass long-toothed factories, disgorging invisible walls of effluent rippled like heat haze against the clouds.

Pass the squats, where buildings so rotten they’ve been abandoned by paying tenants are repopulated by art collectives, their sides re-imagined to murals. Sculptures cling to corners and ledges like insects from other worlds, other dimensions, their fragile limbs at odds with the laws of physics.

One squat has an old mono carriage rigged against the side, halfway up, painted with a symbol that looks like the bastard offspring of the anarchy sign and a question mark. Anarchy? Shock tries to figure out what it means. Is it asking if anarchy still exists? He thinks it does, but then again, what’s anarchic about this life? Forced to live a certain way because normal society rejects you for your failure to pass a test, to conform.

He remembers the Pysch. Everyone does. Two hours of questions and reactions in a room where your every twitch is minutely recorded and catalogued against you. There’s no cheating this test. For those who would not consider themselves anarchists the unexpected betrayal of a rebellious brain must be devastating.

Shock was always aware he’d Fail. He didn’t really care. Working with Corps from the age of nine, he saw what their lives were like. The financial freedom disguising suffocating hierarchies and an impenetrable glass ceiling of Psych eval limitations often keeping those with brighter minds in duller jobs, allowing the unlimited advancement of the dull.

He didn’t want that, knew that even if he scraped a Pass he’d be one of those bright minds leashed into a harness, held back, held down. It reminded him of being born in the wrong body, restrained by biology. He didn’t ditch the tits to strap a desk to his chest. But he didn’t want this either. This rootless, dangerous, paycheck-to-paycheck scramble at the mercy of criminals and psychopaths.

Perhaps that’s what the symbol means. What’s the point of anarchy when the society you live in can shove you into a box no matter how hard you rebel? He can’t help but think that’s why the system evolved. To contain the uncontainable. Limit the prospects of those with limitless capacity for thought, creativity and analysis. In which case, what the fuck has he been doing skirting the borders?

Simple, complicated, painful answer?

Given a choice, he chose not to choose. He chose Sendai, aware how impossible a dream that was. No Fail has ever lived in Sendai, and no Pass who stayed out of line long enough to be harnessed ever made it there either. It’s a non-stance. Says:
If I can’t win, I won’t play ball
. But this is not ball, it’s life. Look at how badly he’s fucked it up.

Shock lifts his head, lets the rain slam into his face, hoping it will wake him on some deep, un-nameable level. Stir whatever spirit, whatever nerve he has remaining. Give him the fight he needs to make it through this. To get rid of Emblem, get off the Gung, and maybe start afresh on a hub, or even a land ship. If it means escape he can get over his fears, can’t he?

Besides, he could learn a lot from those peripatetic land ships, moving between continental shards and scavenging scraps of civilization. Utilising the old to build the new. Isn’t that how it’s always done, the re-building of something broken? If that’s so, he can do it too. Scavenge the scraps of himself worth keeping, the Shock he could have been, and rebuild a new Shock on those foundations. A better one.

It’s an unusual determination, one he attributes to the continued presence of his avis, whose appropriated limo follows in their wake, silent and sleek. Funny that Shock can see it and Joon can’t. Funny how secure that makes him feel, although he’s still not entirely comfortable with these constant companions. Never being alone in his own head is quite the state to acclimatize to, and one of his selves being female is even harder. He feels both attached to and alienated from his deepest self.

Joon aims the cater-bike left, and into the long, low darkness of a block tunnel. Carved out through what would be extra apartment space for traffic flow between overpopulated portions of the Gung’s provinces it takes them to the territory behind Sakkura, a neighbourhood Shock’s entirely unfamiliar with, where slender blocks crowd together like ghoulish onlookers to some gruesome murder—probably his.

Painted a dizzying array of bright colours, they appear at first glance to be uniform, as though built to an architectural formula. Pass that momentary confusion and they reveal an array of unique designs. The only thing these buildings have in common are the eye-watering blocks of colour daubed from foundation to roof, and multitudes of balconies strung with plants and clothes. Some hold wary tenants, peering aggressively out through the rain at the racket of the cater-bike in quiet streets, that throaty bugle of unwelcome noise.

The narrowness of the streets between bright ’scrapers provokes vague recollections of a drunken conversation with Yani, his old study-bud. A year ahead of him at Tech, Yani scraped a Pass on his Pysch and was relegated to work as a courier. That last conversation in some shabby little bar in Shimli was unpleasant.

Yani knocking back straight-up gin with grim dedication, muttering about some crazy plan to jump the system. Go rogue. He’d convinced himself that he could live without ends meeting if he didn’t have to meet the expectations of a life lived WAMOS. Shock wonders what the hell ever happened to him. He hopes Yani managed to do better than he has.

The cater-bike wobbles, throwing his shoulder dangerously close to a thick, filthy window on the ground floor of the nearest ’scraper. There’s literally no room here, the blocks growing direct from either side of muddy strips of cracked concrete passing for both sidewalk and road. Shock leans forward, instinctive, trying to protect himself from possible harm. Yells into Joon’s ear.