Marny (4 page)

“Passenger charge. Standard fee.”

It cost over five credits just to get into a
cab? She was glad Intertech was picking up the bill.

“All in?” the driver asked.

Marny set her pack on the seat beside her and
belted up. “Yep.”

Barely looking at the traffic behind him, he
pulled out into the street. Horns blared, and Marny braced herself
for the crunch of plasmetal.

The driver grinned at her in the mirror. “No
worry. I never get hit.”

There’s always a first
time
. But she didn’t say it
aloud.

As they went down the block, the fare readout
continued to climb. When the cab stopped at a light, Marny leaned
forward.

“How far is it to Intertech?”

“One more street,” he said with a big
smile.

“Are you kidding me? I could have
walked.”

“Maybe you leg hurt.” He shrugged. “I don’t
ask why people take cab, I just drive.”

The light changed, and he zipped forward,
cutting across two lanes of cars. Marny took a deep breath. Even
Roy Lassiter didn’t drive so carelessly.

“We here,” the driver said, coming to a sharp
halt before an enormously tall silver building.

Marny grabbed her pack to keep it from
sliding off the seat and glanced at the readout. The total fare was
a little over eight credits. Robbery. Next time she’d do a little
more research—like looking at a map—before jumping into a grav-taxi
because somebody told her to.

Add tip?
the readout blinked.

Fine. Marny keyed in an extra half-cred.

“I need a hardcopy receipt,” she said.

The driver let out a gusty sigh, but hit a
button and the scanner spat out a slip of paper. She took it and
her pack, then got out of the car.

“Thanks,” she said as the door slid closed
behind her.

“Have a good day!” He grinned, then swerved
suddenly back into traffic, accompanied by another blare of
horns.

Marny slung her pack over her shoulder. She’d
survived her first taxi ride, and was a little wiser for it.

She turned to face the gleaming expanse of
the building. It towered over its neighbors, an edifice of angles
and hard surfaces. The company logo, a blue circle with a stylized
feather through it, was suspended over the main entryway.

Intertech—at last.

***

T
he
Intertech building took up the entire block, with a restaurant on
the bottom floor at one end and some upscale retail stores at the
other. The big front doors were shaded by a blue awning where a
uniformed doorman stood guard, like at a fancy hotel or something.
Marny didn’t suppose she could simply walk into the
building.

“Hi,” she said to the guard. “Could you ping
Brenna Dalton? She’s supposed to meet me in the lobby.”

“Your name?” the guard said, his voice
disinterested.

“Marny Fanalua.”

He put a hand up to his earpiece. “Miss
Fanalua,” he said to whoever was on the other end.

After a moment he nodded and stepped forward,
flashing a key card at the door sensors. They whooshed open.

“You may wait inside,” he said. “Miss Dalton
will arrive shortly.”

“Thanks.”

She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to tip
him, or how to even do that without any spare change, so instead
she just walked into the building. Warm air rushed over her, and
she relaxed a little as she surveyed the lobby.

It was at least two stories tall and all done
up in gold and cream and brown. To her right were acres of couches
and chairs grouped together in small seating arrangements. Beyond
that was a bar with a long polished wood counter and dozens of
glass bottles of varying shapes and colors. Beside it was an
espresso bar, the sound of the coffee grinder a low grumble in the
air. A line of people waited for coffee, which surprised her until
she remembered that many of the Intertech employees lived in the
building. She and the other interns were going to be housed there,
too.

On Marny’s left was a tall counter staffed by
two women wearing blue blazers with the Intertech logo embroidered
over the heart. Another uniformed guard stood beyond the counter,
his hands clasped behind his back.

“Miss Fanalua?” one of the women said.

“That’s me.” Marny stepped up to the
counter.

“Why don’t you have a seat.” She gestured to
a nearby cluster of couches. “Miss Dalton will be down soon.”

“All right.”

Marny headed past the hefty marble table in
the center of the lobby. Bigger than a bed, it bore a huge golden
vase of flowers. She thought they were fake until she walked by and
smelled the lilies and some spicy scent that made her nose wrinkle.
Eucalyptus, maybe?

Behind the couch arrangements stood shiny
banks of elevators—a half-dozen doors all pinched shut in the
middle, like lips closed tight on secrets they would never
tell.

She settled on one of the couches, surprised
at how comfortable it was, and pulled her messager out of her
backpack.

:I’m downstairs by the
elevators,:
she sent to Brenna.

:Yep. brt:
was the reply.

After a moment, Marny keyed in a message to
her family, copying the text to her Uncle Zeg, and Tam.

:Arrived safely. The city is big, but not
too scary. Will vidchat later, once I’m settled.:

True, she hadn’t yet met her Intertech
contact or seen her room, but Marny felt like she’d been working on
an epic questline called “Arrival in Newpoint” since she’d gotten
on the bus yesterday. Now it was nearly complete.

On cue, the elevator doors
dinged open. A woman in her thirties with dark, curly hair stepped
out. She wore jeans and a gray T-shirt,
Checkswing Comics & Games
emblazoned across the front above stylized representations of
superhero logos. Her left ear was studded with piercings, and the
edge of a flower tattoo showed above the neckline of her shirt. A
silver streak ran through her hair, beside her face, and Marny
wondered if it was natural, and if her own hair would ever do
anything that cool. The woman scanned the lobby, then made eye
contact with Marny.

“Are you Marny Fanalua?” she asked.

“Yep.” Marny stood and grabbed her backpack.
“Brenna Dalton?”

“Yes.” Brenna strode forward
and offered her hand. “I’m sorry I wasn’t at the station this
morning. I’m a complete night owl, and it never even
occurred
to me you’d be
arriving this early. For me, there’s only one six in a day, and
that’s p.m.” She gave Marny a rueful smile.

“It’s okay—I got to see some of the city,”
Marny said. And got to prove to herself that she could handle
unexpected mishaps, even in the big streets of Newpoint.

“Still, I owe you. Do you like sushi? There’s
a great spot around the corner. I’ll treat you to lunch later
today.” Brenna glanced around at the couches. “Where’s your
bags?”

“Lost, apparently.”

“That’s tweaked. How do you lose luggage on a
bus?”

Marny lifted her shoulder in a shrug. “They
said they’d contact me as soon as they found it.”

“We can swing by one of the department stores
after lunch,” Brenna said, “grab you anything essential in case
your bag doesn’t show up ’till tomorrow. But first, let’s get you
settled.”

“Sounds good.” Weariness tugged at Marny,
hanging off her like a whiny little kid who wanted attention. A nap
was definitely in order.

“Since you don’t have any bags to lug, we’ll
make a quick stop to get your ID.” Brenna flashed her key card at
the elevator. “Hold still. The scan only takes a second.”

A laser flicked on above the door and thin
blue light traveled over Marny. She didn’t feel a thing, but it was
weird to be inspected so thoroughly.

“Miss Brenna Dalton and visitor,” a metallic
voice said. “You may enter.”

The metal doors slid open. Marny glanced up
at the cameras overhead, tracking their movements. Intertech took
their security seriously.

“Since I’m a mid-level employee, I can bring
extra people in without clearing them at the desk,” Brenna said.
“Your visitors will need to get checked out—they won’t be able to
just come up the elevators, so don’t imagine bringing boyfriends
home after hours.”

“Wasn’t in my plans.”

“Good.” Brenna gave her a grim smile. “You
won’t have much time to socialize, anyway. The pace here is
grueling.”

At least it was only for nine weeks. No
matter how bad things got—and Marny was certainly expecting some
horrors—she could take it for that long.

“How many interns are there?” Marny asked as
she followed Brenna into the brightly lit elevator. Her shoes
squeaked faintly on the polished floor.

“This year there’s three of you. A big crop.
Usually we get one or two. Once, nobody, if you can believe
it.”

An Intertech internship was a golden ticket.
Half the people who interned were offered full-ride scholarships to
the colleges of their choice, and the rest went straight into
high-paying jobs with the company as soon as they graduated from
high school. At her Uncle Zeg’s urging, Marny had applied, but she
really hadn’t thought she’d land one of the coveted spots. When the
acceptance notice came, she’d been sure it was an elaborate
prank.

“Of course they want you,” her uncle had
said. “You’re a smart coder and a creative thinker who clearly has
a clue about what people want. That’s exactly what Intertech is
looking for.”

Once the truth had sunk in, she’d been
elated, in her own quiet way.

Then—unusual for her—she’d started
second-guessing. She’d only gotten in because she was a minority. A
poor one. And a girl. Good PR for the company to show how inclusive
they were.

Still, she couldn’t have
been the only applicant that fit the politically correct criteria.
And Newpoint seemed to contain a huge variety of peoples and
cultures. Maybe she really
had
gotten the internship on her own
merits.

The elevator whooshed smoothly up, numbers
flashing by on the readout over the door.

“The business offices are on floor fifteen
through thirty-eight. Dining’s on thirty-nine,” Brenna said. “The
top floor—level seventy-six—is the CEO’s domain. You’ll never go
there. Under that is middle-management apartments—that’s me—and
forty through fifty are the apartments for the cubicle workers. And
you interns. All told, around seven hundred people live in the
Intertech building.”

It felt a little claustrophobic, like
Intertech was its own hive. Which would make Marny a worker drone,
she supposed. She took a deep breath to dispel the feeling.

“Are the other interns here yet?”

Brenna nodded. “You’re the last to arrive.
You’ll be sharing a triple. Nice thing about living in the building
is that it’s easy to get to work.”

“So about my new roommates—”

The elevator stopped and the doors dinged
open.

“Soon as we’re done here, I’ll take you up to
meet them,” Brenna said, setting a brisk pace down the hallway.

Marny followed her into a large office that,
despite the fact it was Sunday morning, was full of busy
people.

Her surprise must have been clear on her
face, because Brenna gave her another quick smile.

“Intertech has branches all over the world,”
she said. “There’s always somebody here, day and night. This is the
office command central—the international heartbeat of the
company.”

“You make it sound like a living organism,”
Marny said.

“It kind of is.” Brenna snagged a tablet off
the pile on the receptionist’s desk. “Hey, Shawn,” she said.
“Checking in a new intern.”

“Good, good,” the redheaded man said. “I’ll
get the fingerprint scanner primed.”

Marny blinked. “Do you want a DNA sample,
too?” She couldn’t quite keep the sarcasm from her voice. Intertech
was really over the top.

“Nah—you won’t be here long enough for that,”
Brenna said, in all seriousness. She handed the tablet to Marny.
“Fill everything out, we’ll get your prints and picture, and you’ll
be in the system.”

“Great.” Meaning the opposite, of course.

Marny had spent her entire
life living on the edge—of poverty, of social acceptance, of being
a large, strong girl in a culture that didn’t really honor that
model. So she’d embraced everything that made her different. She
was comfortable with edges. This
being
assimilated
thing made her feel itchy under
her skin.

But it was part of the package. She could
hardly work here if she couldn’t even get the elevators to open,
now could she?

It was like playing any other game. Follow
the rules, learn the patterns and expectations. Then, later, break
them as necessary.