Escapology (38 page)

“Thanks, Amiga.”

“No sweat, Haunt. If I don’t see you again, I’m glad I didn’t Clean you. I’m glad I got to save you instead. You’re okay.”

He smiles at that. “You’re not too bad yourself.”

The engine moves on. Only one more stop before the Heights. Volk and Petrie huddle with their people, discussing tactics for the incursion. Shock sits there like a third freaking wheel, feeling all kinds of useless. He looks around the engine, trying to distract himself and ends up staring at the business end, where one of the land-ship folk stands monitoring the automatic systems. It’s old tech all right, but the computers are bloody powerful. He smiles. Here’s where he can help.

Hey, Puss, fancy doing a bit of lock picking?

You quite literally read my mind.

Cracking the engine’s complex tech systems, they use them to get into Heights systems, stopping to stare, dumbfounded, at the amount of VA crammed into its networks. This security is mind-boggling, and they have to somehow clear a path into Heights and up as high as where Breaker’s being kept, somewhere on the top three floors. Getting
to
him will be even harder, but that can wait.

An hour later, the final and most vulnerable group leaves, heading for a safe house offered by Volk. Done with the initial picking of Heights locks and sporting the accompanying headache breaking so much VA so quickly provides, Shock watches out of the windows as they load up EVaC and Mother into another Engine. Mother looks up, seemingly aware of his gaze. Her pale-yellow eyes, soft as primroses, pin him in place. Deceptive shade that. It’s not soft at all when you’re caught in its grip, but neon bright as her tattoos.

I don’t know what to do
, he sends tentatively and, to his surprise, she responds.

No one does. Just do what you can.

The effort it takes a Patient Zero to speak without the interference of virad jingles is immense, and means her words strike their target clean. From the satisfaction in her smile, he knows this is what she intended. She wanted to help. How has he never known people like this before? How has he never known people
could
be like this? He smiles back, raising his hand to wave goodbye. Maggie waves for her, which makes him smile a little more. There’s so much between those two, it’s a beautiful thing to witness.

It occurs to him that, in these past forty-eight hours, he’s smiled more, and more genuinely, than he has for years. And here he is, in the deepest shit he’s ever encountered, heading for certain death with missing fingertips, missing teeth, broken ribs, and half his skin C-genned together. Happiness is clearly unpredictable. Or else he’s just a complete fucking weirdo. Either seems good.

When they reach Heights, Shark’s waiting for them, swimming elliptic shapes around the bay. There’s no server here, only an elevator. Petrie comes to stand beside Shock. He looks stressed, Shock can’t really blame him. He’s not exactly relaxed down here himself. Every now and then it occurs that they are
under fucking ground
and his head goes blank, shivery at the edges. Under any other circumstances, Shock would be hella anxious to leave.

“Can you get us in? Volk was sure you could,” the big guy says, reaching out to run a hand over the elevator doors as if he might be able to get them in via sheer will power. This guy would probably try.

“I already have.” Shock leans to press the elevator call button. “We’ve got access to one of the staff shoots and codes to lock access to the rest. Breaker is on one of the topmost floors, not the highest but definitely a penthouse. There’s no way I can get in through the front door, but I can crack staff access with Puss’s assistance.”

The elevator doors slide open but Shock holds them up a moment longer.

“There are residential shoots, and I didn’t have time to get locks for those, so be prepared for guards. And I’m with Amiga on the Harmonys. Li’s an Archeologist. If she’s been looking for me, chances are she’ll have picked up Breaker’s communication and come straight here. There’s no way to be ready for the Harmonys, just try and stay alive.”

“Sure thing.” Petrie inclines his head at Shark, who’s still circling the station. “You not bringing the killing machine? We could use it.”

“Not at the moment. If Puss or I are injured, our connection to him will help us hang on long enough to do what needs to be done. If he got injured too…”

Petrie nods. “Got it. But you understand we’re at your back? We’ll get you in and out alive.”

“Even so. Just in case,” says Shock, with a smile.

Tough as this guy is, Shock’s a realist. This is a one-way trip. He knew that before he started, and he’s okay with it. Really. He’s okay.

Watching artificial lights flash past in darkness, Amiga thinks back to the day everything changed. The day she met Deuce. She’d been in the dark for so long she didn’t even recognize it as darkness. It was life. Survival. Bunking in the same Shimli apartment she had in Tech, an absolute shit-hole she hardly ever saw. Avoiding sleep had become her religion. At that point she didn’t recognize why. She barely recognized her face in a mirror. Amiga the Cleaner wasn’t anyone she knew. Still isn’t.

She met Deuce after buying takeaway shrimp pad thai from some nothing little noodle bar in Sakkura. Half a street away she bit into the shrimp and realized it was that disgusting reconstituted protein shit they try to pass for shrimp if they think you’re a bit dumb. It was that assumption more than the substitute itself that drove her rage, her decision to go back and rip the shit out of the poor sap behind the till. We share our hurt, oh boy do we ever.

Deuce was ordering chilli beef ramen when she bust back in, all snarls and vicious fury, bringing with her fear that infected everyone in the shop. Except him. He smiled at her. She caught his eye, that smile, and the rage drained away. Left her standing there, hollowed out. She doesn’t even remember leaving, only that he followed her, noodleless, and invited her for a coffee. She still has no idea why she said yes. Still has no regrets. But meeting him was like a light switched on unexpectedly, illuminating grime on the walls, damp and mildew, cockroaches huddled in the cracks, chittering.

Horrified to find herself amongst such filth, Amiga ran from it. She moved in with the Hornets, and began to do things that felt like living rather than dying. And she slept, curled up in the warmth of his body. Real, refreshing sleep. For a while, she felt almost free, like she could actually breathe instead of trying to suck air in a vacuum. She can’t pinpoint the moment it stopped working. But it did. Cracks had formed somewhere inside, and she sank into them: lost herself again.

That’s when she dumped Deuce.

She did it without warning, via IM, lacking the courage to say it to his face. She has no idea how he’s forgiven her for that, but he has. And the Hornets… She expected them to close ranks around him, ask her to leave. Instead, they remained her friends, her family, no questions asked. She’s pretty sure the Hornets have been the saving of her, even if the lesson’s taken a while to sink in.

It’s only recently that the lights inside her have begun to flicker on again, unexpectedly, focusing with painful brightness on the parts of her life that still interface directly with death. There’s a darkness there, so profound it terrifies her, and all the rage, all the annoyance she directs at life, at Deuce, at circumstance, is redirected from that darkness, her frustrating reliance upon it. She wanted to find the courage to do what’s right, but she’s been too afraid that she’s incapable of doing anything right. Anything
healthy
.

Some actions have greater consequences than others. Her recent actions with Twist almost lost her Deuce. Nothing makes that okay, and all her bad choices led to that moment, seeing him lying there, sure he wasn’t breathing. It can’t happen again. What she’s going to do today has to constitute a full stop. After this, if she survives, she’ll have to find another way to live.

“This is the last time,” she says to herself.

“For what?”

Deuce.

She realizes he’s been watching her. He does that. It’d be creepy if she didn’t find it so fucking reassuring.

“Killing. I don’t want to do it any more. After today, I’m not going to.”

“What if you need to?”

“Need is different,” she says quietly. “Need is to defend or protect. What I meant was, after today, I’m not a Cleaner any more. I fucking quit.”

Deuce smiles at her, just like the first time. If only she knew what that smile meant, she’s never seen him show it to anyone else.

“’Bout fucking time,” he says, serious, not even a little bit of heat in it. “Let’s go hand in your notice.”

From a large bag at his feet he pulls out a bulky semi-automatic and begins a series of efficient, practiced checks. Handing it along, he pulls out another gun and starts again, until everyone has a gun. Including him.

“Uh… thought you were staying in the engine? Thought maybe Ravi and KJ should stay behind too.”

He offers her a very real, very pissed starring role in his line of sight. Ouch. She prefers the smile.

“Why?”

Riding her fury and terrified for him, for Ravi and KJ, Amiga gets aggro, communes with her inner bitch.

“You’re physically fucked, KJ’s melon’s all fracked up and Ravi’s the fucking doc. We need him to prevent us from dying, not to die himself. Not. Much. Use.”

“Gee, thanks, Amiga.” Ravi.

Just about reining in her frustration, Amiga snaps, “You know what I mean, Ravi. Surely?”

“No,” Deuce tells her. “No, he doesn’t. He just sees your problem. Your fucking ever present problem.”

“And what in fuck would that be, Deuce?”

Deuce leans over the gun on his lap.

“Your problem, Amiga, is that you only see people in terms of yourself, and we all fail to match up, whether we could or not. I get it. I get the difference between what you do and what we’ve done. But you need to quit underestimating us. We’ve earned it.”

Amiga runs out of words to argue with. Deuce is right, as usual. The Hornets saved her and Shock both today, she owes them some fucking credit whether she likes it or not. And oh man does she ever hate it, not because they’re useless; because she can’t control anything that happens today, and she
needs
to if their lives are at stake as well as her own. Sighing, she straps her crossbow into a chest harness.

“Just be careful, okay? This is Twist’s territory. His people are everywhere and I’m number one on their Cleaning list right now. I won’t be able to watch any back but mine no matter how much I want to.”

Vivid throws her a smile, and a candy bar, brightly wrapped.

“We know it, shug. And if we all survive today, you can buy us all a fucking beer to apologize for insulting the shit out of us right there. Jeez but you are
hard
motherfuckin’ work.”

“Preach it, Vee,” KJ calls out, toasting her with his candy bar.

* * *

The Sendai Station elevator comes out in the back of a rather swish apartment block a ten-minute walk from Denenchofu Plaza. Needless to say, they get some looks, which they ignore. Deuce steals a cater-bike as soon as they’re street-level and leaves with Raid to go crack security.

They’d tried to crack the Engine for that, but the damn thing was too complex, despite being old as all hell and Deuce had to give up, muttering something about needing to borrow Shock’s fucking avi to get anything done. The rest of the group, forty-three including Amiga, take a circuitous route to Central Gardens to give Deuce and Raid time to crack them a way in.

Almost to the plaza, Amiga, keeping point, shoves out an arm to stop everyone.

“What is it?” Vivid asks quietly, moving forward to stand beside her.

Amiga points to the cadre of vans parked, haphazard, in the roadway before the plaza, not usually used for such a thing, but these vehicles were in a hurry.

“Twist. He came home.”

Vivid nods. “Good.”

“Good? Really?”

“Yeah, bitch, of course good! Now you get to kill him.” The last is said as if it’s a thick slice of chocolate cake Vivid can’t wait to sink teeth into.

Oh. Point. And wow Vivid’s more vicious than Amiga took her for. Probably this is what Deuce meant. She does underestimate them. Vivid’s no Cleaner, but her nasty streak is definitely more developed than Amiga’s. And it looks like she
owns
that shit, a huge grin plastered across her face as she contemplates mass crime-lord minion massacre.

Vivid pats her on the back, and gestures the rest of the Hornets out into a semi-circle. They’re all low and gun ready, professional as hell to Amiga’s critical gaze. Have they done this before?

“We’ve done this before,” Vivid murmurs, as if reading Amiga’s mind. “Not with someone like Twist, granted, but it’s a fact guys like him don’t always send in the Cleaners. Sometimes they hire a bunch like us to go in and take out the competition. It pays better than hacking, so we’ve never yet turned it down.”

“You’ve helped guys like Twist stay on top?”

“Just like you have, shug. Devil you know, innit?”

Point two to Vivid. She’s on a winning streak, or else Amiga’s been an ignorant bitch. Unattractive as it might be, she’s pretty sure the latter is closest to the truth.

Vivid indicates for Amiga to follow her into the plaza and, without question, she does. They haven’t underestimated Twist; she can feel the tension throughout the group, the hyper-awareness. The Hornets know what they’re doing, and it’s about time she started working with them, instead of for herself. Frankly, after all she’s learnt about the sheer depth of her dumb-assery, she no longer wants to be self-employed.

They reach the complex and slip around to the maintenance entrances at the side, where they wait until Deuce and Raid coast up on the bike. Deuce chucks a bag to Vivid. She hands out passkeys to all the Hornets and they go in two by two, not bothering to make it seem random, and head for the shoots. Deuce takes his goggles off and holds them out to Amiga. She tries to refuse, but he drapes them around her right wrist and takes her hands in his. IMs her direct, so she can’t ignore him.