Inkers (16 page)

She swung her legs out, lowered herself by her arms and dropped the final two metres, landing with some pain. Elation overwhelmed it. She was out. Whatever happened next, she had done it. She stared around at the dark island with a fierce grin. It had never looked so beautiful. She untied the duvet cover from about her waist and wrapped it around her self. She checked left and right and then ran for the sea, clambering awkwardly over the sharp stones lining the top of the wall.

Leonard’s kayak was resting upside–down behind a ruined wall, its paddle inside. Dragging it, she felt everything with incredible intensity, the pain of the stones against her feet, the noise as she turned it over, shaking from the cold, dragging it into the water, the cold on her feet and ankles so real that she cried out. She dropped the duvet cover and climbed in, aground, looked back up at the farmhouse, only a little light shining from one window. She saw a figure standing looking out – Brian’s silhouette. She froze. He appeared to be looking straight at her, but it was so dark here, and she knew that when he took breaks from the VR he sometimes liked to stand staring out at the sea.

An eternity rolled past. Finally he turned away and disappeared. The light went off a moment later.

With a great effort Lily used the paddle to push herself off the stones, and finally one of the small lapping waves gave her the boost she needed to get free and floating. She paddled.

After a few minutes she heard a sound and looked back. All the lights in the farmhouse had come on. They had noticed her absence; there was no other explanation. She carried on, not looking back, the waves building, rocking over the top of them, her technique awkward, her arms aching from the effort already, her hands in terrible pain from the cold and a deep graze from the wall of the house.

There was shouting back on the island, a male voice that she could not quite pinpoint, then Annie’s voice, and she paddled with everything she had. When at last she dared to look back she saw she had made some progress. Figures were running about on the shore with lights on their heads and hands, and she could not tell who was Tom and who was Leonard and who was Brian and who was Annie.

There was a faint buzz. They had started the engine on the rib. It buzzed louder and then roared as they pulled away.

Lily paddled with everything she had, the waves building higher and higher as she came out of the protection of the curve of the island and into the centre of the channel that divided them from Arran. The kayak was rapidly filling with water and she was already drenched from the rain. At one point she half lost her grip on the paddle and her hands were so numb that she did not immediately notice, and only just caught it as it slid off to her left. She carried on, the roar of the rib getting louder over the splash of the sea. She tried not to think about the icy depth beneath her.

She knew it was coming but she was still surprised when the rib burst over the crest of a wave to her right and drove straight over the front of the kayak, almost crushing her. For a bizarre moment she was staring up at Leonard, very close, and then she bounced away and the kayak rolled over and she didn’t even have time to take a final breath.

She came out of the kayak and began to drown and it was almost a relief. But she felt something then, some movement within her, and it seemed like the water entering her lungs was pushed out. Then hands were grabbing at her and she fought and bit and felt a surge of vitality and warmth rushing through her, and wriggled out of their painful hands, and swam, swam, only guessing at her direction, just away from the boat, away from Brian, away from the island, away from her prison.

The rib was roaring again very close and she was sinking, swimming beneath the surface for as long as she could, just coming up for quick gulps of air, the pain rippling through in unending waves. Her arms were filling with the tired pain, and the cold was unbearable, and she swam, and swam, deeper and deeper where it was a little calmer but her lungs felt like they’d explode and the death–panic came upon her, and then up for a gasp of air, and then down again, over and over, the noise of the rib sometimes overwhelming when she came up, sometimes somewhere in the distance.

Then she didn’t know which way was up, and she was desperate for air, and she knew she was about to die and take Tia with her.

She hit something with her hands, and clawed at it, pulling up, and she was out into air, gasping, the sound of the rib barely audible over the crash of the sea. She was on stones, clawing her way out of the waves, over on her back so she could lie without crushing the baby, gasping the air in, not caring about the waves still licking at her. Finally she turned and clawed forwards with her hands. The warmly lit farmhouse was there on the hill above her, the one she had thought about for so long, and she saw in the darkness that it did have a garden, and it did look neat and well–loved. She began to crawl towards it, clawing at the stones, noticing the blood she was leaving on them but only peripherally.

The hands took her then, pulled her to her feet roughly, but she did not mind it, she was already in so much pain. It was Leonard, and her legs were limp, and he dragged her back to the rib, her heels smashing against the stones.

Brian was there, and she heard him say “Careful, the baby,” and she was placed carefully down in the bottom of the rib, and it roared to life and she lay shaking for a time, her eyes closed, not wanting to see Brian ever again.

They hauled her out and she felt herself be put in a wheelbarrow and taken into a place of warmth. Then Annie was there, her arms around her, peeling off the icy clothing, stroking her and muttering words of comfort. Lily looked up at her, shaking so hard she thought her bones might shatter. Half of Annie’s face was gouged away, but it had healed, a mottled burn scar. Her left eye was simply not there, the very left edge of her lips curled in permanent sneer. Lily had done that to her. Annie came to her and picked her up and held her close.

Then Brian was there, and Annie let her go. Lily turned to look at him, feeling something like defiance. Brian spoke softly, but his voice was filled with venom.

“I will not allow you to destroy everything. I will cut it out of you if I have to.”

Everything went black.

When not working out or reading Amber
passed the time by watching her ex–competitors through their implants. By the terms of the restrictions Dryer had put into place on her apartment she was allowed download bandwidth but no upload whatsoever. She could receive news from the outside world and increasingly desperate communications from Robert, but, frustratingly, send nothing in return. The darknet watch was long dead.

House arrest was like being an addict again, sans any of the fun parts. She could not help thinking about it all, leaving home aged eighteen and moving directly into the party scene just when ink was at its coolest. She had quickly become a functional addict, loving every part of the experience of dermalling, even the garlic aftertaste. She had supported her long–term boyfriend John, also an addict, until in 2026 she brought him a special dose of red, the “anger” ink, and he mutated and ran through a partition wall, shredding his flesh to a horrifying pulp. She threw herself into her addiction as a distraction from the image of his corpse. Like all inkers who were lucky enough to survive long enough she gained complete immunity to the effects of the drug. Shortly afterwards the GSE erupted from Gloucestershire; in the days afterwards civilians were piling computers in the streets and burning them. Inkers she knew personally were murdered on the street in the luddite backlash.

Her skin was grey from ink trauma, a clear sign of both her past and her immunity. She took the only respectable employment avenue now available to the pariahs immunes had become: ITSA inkhunter. Free of the drug she found within herself a hitherto untapped pool of strength and energy. She became a bright trainee and a decorated hunter. She got to know Robert, the most sheltered computer nerd she had ever met, and fell completely in love with him. The next decade had been a cycle of hunting and training and avoiding bureaucracy.

Apart from saving her from forced retirement, the Nepali promotion would have made her the highest–ranking immune in ITSA.

Now she could not even go outside.

She took to following the blond man she had seen on that first day in Kathmandu. His name was Rowntree, and Amber begrudgingly admitted to Emily that he seemed competent, if a little too focused on doing things precisely by the book.

Today he was in plain clothes at the Monkey Temple, looking for tourists carrying TLA–violating tech. It was a boring job and was largely unhelpful to ITSA’s overall goals of limiting Chinese technological development, but catching tourists in possession of drone–cameras that were just a little bit too smart was at least politically neutral and unlikely to piss off anyone important. It was a boring job but, four months on, the furore over the signal of 11 November had largely died down, and things were starting to reach a kind of normality.

The tourists drifted past, laughing and enjoying the atmosphere. Locals wandered around, some looking for fun, some selling things. Rowntree watched, obviously bored. He would be aware that she was observing through his implants, but it didn’t seem to bother him.

His gaze lingered for a moment on a pair of western tourists wearing stuffed back–packs. They seemed to have been staring at him, but now that he was looking back, they turned away as one and looked up at a large statue of a minor Nepali deity.

Rowntree watched them for a moment longer, and then was distracted by a tall Indian girl walking past, smiling at him.

“What the hell was that?” Amber said.

“No rules against looking at girls,” Emily said.

“No, no, that couple before, their backpacks – are there any other feeds around? Any public?”

“Uh —yeah, a bunch of
really
cheap drones. Nothing decent quality.”

“Find the one with the best view of that couple and stick me on, now.”

“Just a sec. Okay, brace for a severe fidelity drop.”

She switched Amber’s perspective across and all Amber’s senses except sight stopped getting input immediately. It was an uncanny and even frightening experience if you weren’t used to it, but if you added it all up Amber had spent years of her life in VR and it didn’t bother her any more. The pixelated quality of the image was annoying, though. She couldn’t see the couple. The drone was drifting over the heads of the tourists, swinging from side to side a little, buffeted by the light breeze.

“You weren’t joking,” Amber said. “It can’t even hold itself steady.”

“I think it’s a homemade kit,” Emily said. “Making a bit of money from poor people who want to look at the temple, I guess.”

“Where’s the couple?”

“One second.”

The drone floated past a group of tall Chinese tourists, and then they were there, walking side by side. She could just see the blond splash of Rowntree’s hair about twenty metres ahead of them, starting to ascend some stairs. She was struck suddenly by how conspicuous he was – alone, in neat trousers and a shirt, he was obviously not a tourist.

“ITSA Nepal really need to think up some proper profiles, he sticks out like anything.”

The drone started to drift up and Amber lost sight of the couple, who still had not looked at one another, or, as far as she could tell, said a word. Rowntree climbed the stairs slowly, moving out of view.

“How much to follow that couple?”

“Like – two hundred rupees.”

“Do it, from my personal funds if they won’t authorise it. Get full control if you can.”

“One sec – OK. I can tell it where to go as long as it doesn’t think it’s going to get damaged.”

“OK, the couple, right now!”

With a jerk the little drone stopped its upwards rise and began to tilt down, but the couple were gone. It looked up at the stairs – Rowntree had disappeared, too.

“Em –” Amber said, but the implant administrator was already driving the drone forward and higher, view pointing further down as it accelerated. It rose up the stairs, scanned left and right, and then spun all the way around, too quickly for Amber to pick out any individuals.

“There he is,” Emily said, as if to herself, and the drone shot sideways, rushing a couple of metres over people’s heads, finally slowing near a balcony. Rowntree was a few yards ahead, leaning on a wall and looking out over the crowds, the trees, and Kathmandu spread out beyond.

“The couple?” Amber said.

The drone spun to the right and zoomed in – they were there, standing by the wall, half–hidden behind a large block of stone, staring at Rowntree. Slowly, the woman took off her backpack, set it on the ground, and started to pull out what looked like an ancient camera.

“That a camera?”

“It looks – there’s something a little strange about it, it’s not showing up on any catalogues or – there are no ITSA drones close by, I think…”

The woman was fiddling with the camera, keeping it half–hidden in the bag, half covered by her body. The man was just staring at Rowntree.

“What’s his imp
doing
? You’d have spotted that, right?”

“Yes, I would, I think – yeah, he’s got a really limited administrator, basically just lets his implants function. Doesn’t even pretend to be sentient, Rowntree must’ve heard that Dryer likes that kind of thing.”

“Can we message him?”

“No, we’ve got nothing out–bound except the line to the office.”

“Get me the office. And get his attention. Wave in front of him.”

“It – it won’t let me get that close to him. I’ll try to go around the front.”

The drone moved to the wall, but stopped before going out over the drop.

“I’m sorry, Amb, that’s the edge of its parameters.”

“Try and get a different drone that you can make wave in front of him or ram him or something. Pay whatever it takes. Are they picking up?”

There was silence for a moment. The drone kept on moving frantically to the left and right, about two metres from Rowntree. He continued to stare out over the city.