The hologram floating in front of Bomber was all but perfect. It had Gabriel’s face down to the smallest wrinkle, his exact voice, even his presence. The image was no larger than a man, but just like Gabriel himself it seemed to fill up all available space, demanding everyone and everything’s full attention. Hate boiled in Bomber’s stomach at the sight of it, but he kept a tight rein on his feelings. There were three obvious things that identified this thing from the real Gabriel.
One, it had huge white wings and a sword made of pure fire. Two, it was hovering six metres above the ground. And three, the most unsettling, was that its eyes weren’t really eyes at all. Just pools of white light that stared unseeing into the middle distance.
“What the fuck?” said Hawthorn, half confused, half dumbstruck with awe.
Bomber hushed him. “He thinks he’s an angel,” he whispered, “or somethin’ like that.” Carefully he paced forward until he was directly in front of the hologram, firelight from the sword flickering on his face. He said, “I think we’ve met. You’re . . . the Angel’s Sword?”
“I am,” it boomed. The hologram’s mouth didn’t move, but the sword’s flames flickered to the rhythm of the words. “And you are the man with no name, occasionally known as Jacob Dusther or Simon Caine.”
Hawthorn made another noise. “Simon Caine?”
“Shut up, Hawk.” Bomber stared up at the hologram, taking another grenade from his belt. This one was twice as big as the scrambler, with red and yellow warning markers and the letters FAE stamped on the top. “Do you know what this is, Sword? Mind if I call you ‘Sword’?”
“It’s a fuel-air explosive with sufficient power to destroy most of the contents of this room, and potentially damage structural supports enough to collapse this part of the building. I believe you intend to use it as a means of coercion.”
“Just tryin’ to establish our bargaining position, that’s all. Believe me, I’d enjoy nothing more than blowin’ this whole place to bits.” Grinning nastily, Bomber fiddled with the grenade pin. He didn’t have a lot of experience intimidating AIs, but from experience, this sort of thing usually did the trick on humans.
“Which you’ll undoubtedly do anyway if I give you what you want. ‘Artificial intelligence’ does not mean ‘gullible.'”
“The way I see it,” Bomber said matter-of-factly, “you can either talk or be difficult. Only one of those options has any chance of you comin’ out alive. Now, where are the two soldiers who came down here a minute ago?”
The voice laughed, and the flames rippled like an oscilloscope. It echoed, “Is that what you came all this way to ask?”
“I wouldn’t recommend playin’ games with me.”
“I don’t play games. Your men are unimportant. If I’m to answer questions, let the questions be important.”
Things went quiet for a moment. The hologram projector emitted an otherworldly hum while Hawthorn choked down his anger and forced himself not to repeat Bomber’s demands. The sword’s flames burned without a sound. No heat, no smoke, just clear and single-minded fire. For Bomber it was like having his own state of mind reflected back at him.
He pressed, “Where is Gabriel? Where’s Gina?”
“That’s more like it.” The sword flickered violently for a moment. “My lord is in his airship above the City. The woman Gina Hart, also known as Emily Marie Vaughan, was last detected leaving the Ukrainian city of Odessa in a southerly direction. Will that be all?”
“How do I know you’re tellin’ the truth?”
“I would say I am as reliable as the next man with a gun to his head.”
“Fine. Tell me about the Hephaestus project, and where the bots are located.”
“Ah.” The sword burned uncertainly. “I do not appear to have access to those files. I only know that we are in the process of acquiring more information.”
That piqued Bomber’s attention. “Acquirin’ from whom?”
“My apologies. I don’t know.”
Coolly, with a determined gleam in his eye, Bomber pulled the pin on his grenade. He held down the safety lever which kept the fuse from being triggered, and twirled the pin around his finger on its little steel O-ring.
“You can tell me where Gabriel and Gina are, no trouble, but I’m supposed to believe you’ve got nothing on Hephaestus?”
The sword, if it could be said to have an expression, took on a new pattern which resembled nothing so much as a smile. “I have answered you to the best of my ability.”
“Yeah, well, I’m startin’ to think this isn’t what it looks like,” Bomber went on, studying the rhythm of the unearthly fire. “For all I know your hardware could be halfway around the world, and this whole conversation is bein’ conducted through the ‘Net. That’s why you’re not afraid of me. You’re not really here at all.”
The flames writhed like orange snakes. “Interesting theory. Please, do continue.”
“I’m startin’ to wonder if you were ever housed here in the first place. You got full access to GlobeNet, there’s no reason for Gabriel to come visit your location in person. There’s nothing he could do in the flesh that couldn’t be done in VR. So what makes him keep coming back, unless it’s all just a big blinking decoy?”
The sword didn’t offer an immediate response, but the fire jumped and spat furiously in silence. After a long pause it said in a whisper, “That’s exactly the question I’ve been wanting you to ask.”
Everything went quiet. The hologram of Gabriel disappeared, leaving only the sword of fire, dancing to its own weird rhythm. Bomber stared at it while a horrible feeling crawled slowly out of the depths of his soldier’s intuition. The interval between each spurt of flame was one second exactly, like a well-oiled clock. Or, thought Bomber, a detonator counting down.
“Jacob, I think we should run,” suggested Hawthorn as the wall of electronics in front of them began to spark and sizzle.
“Yeah,” said Bomber. He carefully slotted the pin back into his grenade to make it safe to carry. Then he added, “Good idea.”
They turned as one and launched themselves back at the maze, sprinting for the staircase at speeds any professional runner would’ve envied.
Bomber had made it halfway up the stairs, with Hawthorn and Stundog in pursuit, when the ground underneath him started to shake. It was like an earthquake in slow-motion, a violent scissoring left and right, that lasted for a few seconds and then quieted down again.
Bomber lost his footing and fell flat on his face. So did the others, and they coughed and swore as they picked themselves back up, the air filled with choking plaster dust and bits of old concrete.
“He’s gonna bring this whole place down on top of us!” panted Hawthorn. “We’re trapped like fucking rats!”
“I ain’t gonna die buried alive,” Bomber muttered with iron certainty. He didn’t believe in destiny, and God was much too far away to take an interest, but there was a force driving him onward like a tidal wave. That force would hold up the ceiling until he made it out. It would throw him to safety ahead of any explosion. It would shield him from bullets, shrapnel, anything that might cause him harm. It would keep him alive for as long as he needed to chase his all-consuming goal.
It didn’t matter if it was lady Fortune, or the laws of drama, or the patron saint of single-minded bastards personally holding a hand over his head. Bomber believed in it. He was a charmed man. Whether it would extend to Hawthorn and his crew . . .
“I ain’t gonna die buried alive!” he called over his shoulder. “Are you?!”
Hawthorn laughed at that. “You always were a cocky bastard, you know that?”
Bomber offered no response.
Whole chunks of concrete fell from the dilapidated ceiling, turning their mad dash for the surface into an obstacle course. Bomber dodged the pieces as they fell, jumped over them where he could and levered them out of the way where he couldn’t. The ceilings above him creaked and sagged as their foundations shifted out from underneath. Even the big supporting columns holding up the roof started to deform, hardened concrete and steel bending like wet cardboard.
An avalanche of rubble blocked up part of the stairway. Without hesitation Bomber jumped up along the wall and grabbed the handrail of the landing above, hauling himself up past the blockage.
Then he burst through the door at the top of the stairs. Hawthorn was almost on his heels, but Stundog couldn’t make the jump, weighted down with his combat gear. He frantically tried to get it all off, but disappeared from sight as the whole stairwell crumpled in on itself.
A few soldiers from Hawthorn’s squad were waiting for their Major, and he took charge of them right away. He bellowed to run like hell.
They ran headlong into another obstruction, fallen ceiling blocking their only exit. Thinking on his feet, Hawthorn tapped his squad grenadier on the shoulder and pointed to the wall.
“Improvise,” he said.
The man levelled his grenade launcher at the wall and held down the trigger. An entire magazine chewed into the concrete like a great big blender, explosion after explosion throwing big chunks of shrapnel into the air.
Bomber shielded his face with his arms and dove through the firestorm, into daylight. The troops wasted no time following in his footsteps.
Behind them, the building crumbled wing by wing, vomiting huge clouds of stinging dust through every gap. The ground just kept rumbling until the final piece came to rest on the rubble heap.
“Fuck me,” sputtered Hawthorn, in between hacking up mouthfuls of dust. When he regained control of his lungs, he ordered his men to move to the getaway car, then took Bomber’s arm and pulled him aside. The adrenaline was wearing off. Now there was only tightly-restrained fury on his face.
Bomber stared at the grip on his arm. Old and new resentments coiled around his heart like snakes of ice. “Hawk, the last person to touch me like that had to have his body parts sewn back on.”
“Is that a threat, Jake? Are you threatening me?”
“Just tryin’ to save you a perfectly good hand.”
For a moment it looked like Hawthorn might lose it, shaking with rage, but his control held out and he made himself let go.
“Explain to me what in hell you were thinking, playing chicken with an AI.”
“I got it talking, didn’t I?”
Hawthorn almost laughed, but there was no humour in his eyes. “You just don’t get it, do you? It’s a machine! It’s got no impulse towards self-preservation, it doesn’t feel fear, it doesn’t feel anything! The worst mistake you can possibly make is treating it like a human being!”
“You reckon you could’ve done better?”
“Given that I’ve been studying the possibilities of getting info out of a hostile AI for the last couple of years, yes, I fucking well could! I thought you had some kind of plan, but thanks to you every last word it said is worthless!”
“I don’t think so.”
Hawthorn blinked, the wind momentarily out of his sails. He blurted, “Don’t what?”
“Think about it, Hawk. We ran into that thing down there because that’s what we expected to find, and we went along with it hook line and sinker. If Gabriel really wanted to kill us here then we’d be dead. God knows we gave him enough fuckin’ opportunity. He’s playin’ some kind of game with us, and he wants us to puzzle out the clues.”
“Is that it, Jake? You think this is all a game?” Teeth bared, Hawthorn slammed his fist into a chunk of half-collapsed wall. “Why don’t you tell that to Stundog’s fucking wife and kids, huh? Or to Banjo and Kirby? Where do you get the fucking brass, Jake?!”
Bomber offered no response. He felt . . . nothing. No compassion, no empathy. He knew exactly what was going through Hawthorn’s mind, had suffered through it himself, but he just couldn’t bring himself to care. The only emotion inside him was for Gina, and for Gabriel. Nobody else.
“I’ve had enough. We’re going back to base and getting in touch with Command. As far as I’m concerned this whole operation is a wash, they may as well reassign us to a different zone.”
Shrugging, Bomber said, “You outrank me, Major. Your op, your call.”
Something ugly crossed Hawthorn’s face then, something beyond anger or simple rivalry. “I always had your wing when we were flying, Grendel,” he spat. “Always. The least you could do is be there for me for once in your life.”
With that he turned away, gathered his troops, and got them moving towards the getaway van. Toledo was driving; he pulled right up to the kerb, shielding them from prying eyes as they tumbled inside. Bomber gave the Spaniard a silent nod before he climbed aboard.
Far in the distance, emergency vehicle sirens began to howl.
“You weren’t at the debriefing,” said Toledo, intruding on Bomber’s thoughts. The Spaniard planted himself in a rickety desk chair opposite Bomber’s spot on the windowledge. The chair’s wheels squeaked as it spun towards the cheap plywood desk in the middle of the room, where Toledo put his feet up. A moment later he was completely at ease, hands folded over his stomach, regarding Bomber with razor-sharp intelligence.
He went on, “Did it happen like they said?”
Bomber nodded, with a glance outside to make sure they were alone. He’d taken over a small, abandoned office in Hawthorn’s headquarters to get some private space. Put his thoughts in order, that sort of thing. Mostly he just sat thinking about Gina, Gabriel, Odessa and the City. Wondering how it all fit together.
“What’s the fastest way of gettin’ to the Ukraine?” he asked.
“Getting into any of the Marxies is easy. Getting back out is the challenge if you’re wanted in the Federation. You aim to go after your friend?”
“She just left Odessa. Gabriel’s waitin’ for something in the City. It don’t take a telepath to figure out what’s going on.” His fierce protective instinct flared up at the thought of Gabriel and Gina even being on the same continent, and he ground his teeth in frustration. “She might not even know she’s headed straight for a trap. If I can intercept him before he reaches her . . .”
“That’s awfully thin, Bomber.”
“It’s enough.”
“It’ll be expensive.”
“I got enough saved. If I run out then I’ll work the difference.”
“What about your friends here?”
“What about them?” he asked sharply.
“Listen, Bomber–“
“Am I detectin’ some kind of problem? Have you got an angle in this now?”
Toledo shot him a warning look. “I don’t know what you plan to do against Gabriel, but right here you have a team of trained Spec Ops personnel with a lot of equipment and firepower. That’s got to make a difference, and yet you’re quite happy to leave it all behind, unused. No amount of history between you and the Major should get in the way of the job.”
Despite the anger boiling under his skin, Bomber clenched his jaw and reined in his temper, stopping himself from saying something he’d regret. Composing himself, he hissed out, “Anything between me and Hawk is not my fault.”
“Don’t be a damn fool, Bomber. You need him as much as he needs you. Make your peace and start focussing on Gabriel, the way you should be.”
At that precise moment, Bomber’s mobile phone rang. He stopped in surprise and dug it out of his pocket, then blinked at the display. It said, in plain black lettering, ‘JOCK’. Emotionless, he pressed the answer button and watched as a little hologram blinked into existence in front of him, Jock’s face slightly distorted through the bad reception. Rat was watching over his shoulder.
“Simon, are you there?” His voice sounded tinny and hollow. “Can you hear me?”
“Don’t say anything. Verify who you are first.”
“No time for that bullshit! Thank fuck you’re alive, I’ve got to warn you.” There was a frantic tone to his words that got Bomber’s attention. “Listen, Gabriel is preparing some kind of major cyber attack on somebody. He’s hired all of fucking Ireland and God knows who else to make him some kind of information super-weapon, and it looks like he’s ready to launch it. Europe was just a practice run. He could knock out communications worldwide.”
Bomber absorbed the information in silence. All he said was, “Has Gina been in touch with you?”
“That’s not important, we’ve got–“
“Don’t tell me what’s fuckin’ important, Jock,” Bomber said icily. “Maybe I should wonder about why you haven’t been returnin’ my calls. Maybe that wasn’t important either.”
“No, man, I just never got a chance–“
“I ain’t gonna ask again. Has she contacted you at all over the last few weeks?”
Swallowing, Jock moaned, “No. If she had I’d know about it.”
Behind him Rat squirmed and kept her mouth shut. Bomber noticed it but didn’t pay it much mind. The girl had been sort-of close to Gina, so it was only natural for her to be concerned. Beyond that, Bomber didn’t really know her, and without any immediately useful skills she didn’t feature in his world.
“You gotta do something, Simon, before he–“
“Enough,” said Bomber. “Gabriel is my problem. You find some way of keepin’ in touch outside of normal channels, in case something happens like you say. Do whatever you gotta do. I just want you to find out two things for me, and I don’t care if you got to cast across the whole ‘Net for it.”
Jock sighed. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Get me a pinpoint on Gina’s exact location. And,” Bomber glanced out the window watching the faint shimmer of a pair of camouflaged Army guards on patrol, “tell me what Gabriel’s after in the City. I want to know why he’s there. Maybe he ain’t just waitin’ for Gina, maybe there’s something more to it.”
“Right,” said Jock, and hung up.
After a long, thoughtful silence, Bomber looked away from the window and intercepted Toledo’s wrist as it pulled a cigarette out of his inside pocket.
“Tell Hawthorn I want to talk to him. Tell him it’s important.”
Toledo said nothing as he placed the cigarette between his lips and ignited it with an old-style petrol lighter. Blue smoke curled up from the end, hanging in the air between him and Bomber. Then he stood up, crossed to the door as silently as a cat, and disappeared down the hallway.
There was a click as the phone line disconnected under his thumb. Jock closed his eyes, massaged his temples, then chucked the phone across the room. Rat watched it ricochet off the wall and the floor a few times, pretty much invulnerable inside its bounce-polymer casing. Jock clenched his fists and gave a resentful growl as if he’d wanted it to break.
Rat caught his hands and held them gently, trying to calm him down. “Hey, come on,” she soothed. “So he’s a dickhead. It’s not the end of the world, right?”
“I wouldn’t be so sure, Lex.” He shrugged her off in anger. “And just to add insult to injury, Simon is the only person I know who has the slightest chance of affecting how this is going to play out. There really ain’t no fucking justice.”
“Pretty strong words from someone who told me to keep quiet about everything just a few days ago,” she said, a little bit too sharply. She tried to soften her tone as she went on, “How long have you known he wasn’t dead?”
“He left a message on my phone yesterday, asked me to call him back. I didn’t. I wanted to keep us away from him.” Jock slumped onto the bed. His face lost all its usual guile, and he looked her straight in the eye. She’d never seen such an honest expression on him. “You’ve met him, Alex. He’s trouble on two legs.”
“I thought he was your friend.” God, she felt like a shitheel saying that.
“You don’t make friends with a guy like Simon. There’s nothing there, inside, to make friends with.” He pointed at his chest. “Hollow people. All you can do is make use of them as and when.”
Rat bit her tongue, trying to think of something to say without exposing herself. Finally she asked, “What about Gina?”
A little bit of the old Jock spirit returned to him, snorting at the ridiculous question. “What do you think? A piece of meat like that? If she’s not with Simon, she’s dead and buried in a Y-shaped coffin, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. I’m not casting for a corpse.”
“I . . .” she began, but it was too late to go back now. She’d gotten herself caught in the lie. Jock looked up at her, waiting for her to continue, and she blurted, “What do you need me to do?”
“There’s not much to do, babe. I’ll be busy with Simon and the botnet, and Hideo’s going to try getting the Fifteen together, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. Lots of politics, old rivalries, endless piles of bullshit.” He shrugged. “That’s why nobody’s called an emergency meeting in ten years. One or two of them won’t even set foot in Laputa.”
Rat’s eyes smouldered as she rounded on him. “Don’t even think of telling me I can sit quietly on the sidelines, Jock.”
“I’m not asking you to,” he snapped back. “I just need some time to work. Can’t you go out and have fun for a few hours? What did you use to do with your free time before you met me?”
“Break into people’s houses and steal their shit to make rent on the one-by-two coffin I was living in. Why the fuck did you think I learned to pick locks?”
“I never, um . . .”
“I ended up in juvenile three times. While we were friends.”
He sat looking at her with his mouth open, feebly moving his jaw like some kind of fish, but failed to make any intelligible sound. Lost for words. Frustrated and fed up with him, Rat turned on her heel and swept up her coat as she stormed out. The hotel room door slammed shut behind her.
Fucking figures, she thought venomously. The second something important happened, she was once again surplus to requirements, dismissed out of hand.
She didn’t have a room key for the card lock, but she discovered she didn’t actually give a shit. She loved Jock, he just annoyed the hell out of her sometimes. A bit of space was needed to top up her patience.
Also, she happened to have palmed Jock’s wallet, which gave her ready access to a few million Federation dollars in credit chips. The Chrome Rat needed an expense account for the duration of her work with Jock. Someday he’d learn to appreciate her.
She strode fiercely towards the covered walkway into the next block, black leather coat swishing gently around her ankles. Underneath it she wore a black t-shirt borrowed from Jock, with the skull and crossed syringes logo of his favourite nanorock band, and a new pair of skinny jeans she’d bought on Cloud City. It made her look a little bit more . . . feminine than usual, didn’t conceal quite as much. It didn’t even have a hood. She felt strange looking at herself now, but despite her anxiety she told herself she’d just have to get used to it. It would be good to show herself. Not having to pretend.
Of course, Laputa might be the only place in the world where you could wear a floor-length leather coat and not look like a complete dickhead.
There were people all around her with such extensive wardrobes, piercings and other body mods they could give the City’s local colour a run for their money. She spotted one guy who’d had his face and hair reconstructed to look like a minotaur, to go with his steroid-enhanced physique, arguing with a guy with scales painted all over his face. A few moments later she passed a girl with an animated holo-tattoo implanted in the middle of her forehead, projecting a third eye that blinked realistically and followed her movements. Rat had seen that kind of thing a few times before, in the City, where it was becoming a fad for kids experimenting with Spice.
She closed her eyes while she made the crossing between buildings and tried to ignore the walkway’s gentle swaying in the wind. Once her surroundings stopped moving she dared to look again, and immediately hit a small ‘street’ of local shops advertising the weirdest collection of merchandise she’d ever seen together. The choices ranged from Eastern-European snack food to vintage electronics, from household robots to ancient printed books. They competed for attention with every kind of holographic ad and sign they could fit into the space. The only barrier seemed to be the holographic sky projected onto the ceiling, which mimicked the weather outside with uncanny accuracy.
Nothing she’d ever heard or seen about Laputa could live up to the reality. And this wasn’t even close to the city centre.
Rat let herself go with the crowd, not even looking at the windows. All her attention was on the people around her. No one noticed her, or at least, they didn’t scurry past her giving her the dirty looks she’d gotten so used to. She was just another girl in the crowd.
It couldn’t have been more different from the backstreets where she grew up. Here were all kinds and colours of women in plain view, doing whatever it was they did for a living, wearing anything from ankle-length dresses to strapless bikinis. Nothing was too revealing, no body mod or fashion accessory too gaudy or outlandish. Nobody went around with their heads bowed trying to avoid attention. You couldn’t even see the glass ceiling of the rankings hanging over them.
A nugget of old anger woke in Rat’s chest, burning like charcoal. To people in the City she’d been street trash, Korean scum, barely one step above black gaijin and several steps below white ones. Even worse, she’d dared to be born with a cunt. That was practically unforgivable. She’d gone through life hiding as much of herself as she could, dreaming of a day where she could go out dressed as a woman without having to worry, knowing that no one would look down on her. She would do it just to piss them off.
Only . . .
A horrible feeling began to creep up her spine. It was like a million ants crawling on her skin, skin barely covered by what she wore, exposed and vulnerable to all these people. They could just look at her and know. Sweating, she noticed men glancing at her, checking her out, wondering hungrily what they could find underneath her clothes. There were even women scoping her out the same way, the same quick look, predatory with just a hint of guilt. Rat couldn’t tell if they were thinking of her as a potential fuck or as competition.
Breathing hard and halfway to panic, she ducked into an alcove outside the flow of the crowd and pulled her coat up over her head, sagged against the wall. She wanted desperately to run home for her all-disguising hoodie and cargo trousers, for the secrecy that would make her feel safe.
The panic faded as she sat there on the outside looking in. She could’ve been invisible for all the attention anyone paid her. Nobody said a word. Gradually she summoned up the courage to open a gap in her headcover, stealing glances at the faces as they passed. They didn’t even look at her.
Rat found herself fascinated all over again. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people were walking down this street, but blind to anything they saw along the journey. They were in transit, minds firmly on their destinations, barely aware of their surroundings except in knowing when to move aside.
With her armour on, Rat had never thought of street people as anything more than a frightening mass of eyes and bodies. Obstacles to avoid. To that end Rat camouflaged herself and learned how to dodge their attention, how to slip between the cracks. Now she suddenly saw them in a different light. They were all going somewhere, for whatever reasons, their lives stretching out in front and behind.
Then she noticed the trainers.
If she hadn’t been studying the crowd, she might never have spotted them. They might have been just a pair of faded old shoes which happened to stride past her hiding place. To alert eyes, however, they were more than that. They moved with a different kind of purpose from every other pair of feet in view. Rat recognised their gait almost immediately; those shoes had a destination, but they drifted back and forth through the crowd with an affected aimlessness, dragging their heels a little bit too loudly, placing each lazy-looking step to a precise plan. Above them was a small shape hidden inside a khaki raincoat, head down, hands buried deep in its pockets. It never looked up but constantly moved its head from side to side to keep track of its surroundings.
Some unnamed impulse dragged Rat to her feet. She followed the trainers through the crowd, matched their every move with her own skill at going unnoticed. Each time the trainers disappeared around a corner, Rat was right behind them and locked on again. They were always there.
Rat caught one last glimpse of them turning off the streets into a narrow alleyway, and she hurried to catch up. When she rounded the corner, however, she came face to face with a blank wall. No doors, no stairs, nowhere to go. She doubled back and searched the street in case she’d taken a wrong turn, but there was no doubt she was in the right place.
Then the floor underneath her clicked like a door latch and she didn’t even have time to scream before she dropped into darkness.
For a second Rat was all tangled up in her own coat, restrained and blind, and claustrophobic panic clenched her throat. Her body was already full of adrenaline and now every heartbeat boomed painfully in her ears. She was gasping for breath and dripping with cold sweat by the time she managed to worm out of the heavy leather, struggling dizzily to her feet. She tried to get her bearings in the unfamiliar space. The coat pooled around her ankles and her drenched t-shirt clung to her skin.
“Who’s there?” she rasped breathlessly. “That wasn’t funny!”
Somebody laughed from the half-light, and Rat’s eyes followed the sound to the end of the tunnel in front of her. She was in some kind of narrow service way underneath the street, flanked by huge pipes and bundles of wire as thick as tree trunks. There was a ladder behind her going back up. The only other obvious exit was straight ahead, down the dark tunnel.
“Not my fault you were following me,” answered a husky female voice, amused and a little shaky. “Where I come from, that’s considered a tiny bit rude.”
“And dropping people down tunnels isn’t?”
The girl seemed to stop and think for a moment. Then, “Am I right in thinking you’re not a member of our kind and gentle authorities?”
Rat relaxed a fraction. She didn’t seem to be in any danger just yet, so she drew herself up and crossed her arms. “Maybe, but at this point I’d really like to know where I am.”
“In Laputa, about halfway up Twelve Block, standing at the bottom of some ladders.”
“Fucking hilarious. I don’t have the patience for this bullshit today, whoever you are. Maybe I should get the authorities involved.”
The girl tapped her foot impatiently. “Look, the ladder’s behind you and the hatch is unlocked. Go if you’re going. Otherwise shut the fuck up and come in.”
Light footsteps echoed away and her presence faded. She’d gone. Rat hesitated a moment, then decided to follow through the gloomy tunnels. All she had to see by were a few battery-powered LEDs stuck to the wall.
The tunnels were bare and functional but not dilapidated. All the pipework and trunking had a well-maintained look about it. Rat wondered at the doors leading off in different directions, their locks and latches destroyed by having concrete poured into them. Even if they still led somewhere, nothing short of a battering ram would get them open.
She kept going until she hit another fire door, this one left ajar and wedged with a block of old plastic. Warm yellow light poured out through the crack. Rat pushed it open with hard-earned caution, rebalancing her weight into a karate stance, and stepped into . . .
Well, it was a large room. Lined on both sides with old metal bunk beds, several of which were occupied by gently-snoring people. Shoved into a corner at the far end was a big wooden table and chairs laid out with food and drink. Two girls of Rat’s age sat having what looked like breakfast.
Rat didn’t give them much thought, though. Her eye was almost immediately drawn to the other corner.
An outdated but powerful last-generation VR rig sat ensconced amidst a web of extension leads and high-speed wireless equipment. Three women were hooked up to it, one suspended in a harness, the other two in comfortable chairs wearing crowns. They sat facing away from Rat but she could sense the air of concentration about them, like hackers on a job.
A wave of heat rolled over her as she inched inside. The rig’s cooling fans howled like mad dogs, spewing hot air into the badly-ventilated room. It reeked of melting plastic.
The girl Rat had been chasing now straddled a chair beside one of the bunks, leaning her arms on the backrest. Her hood was thrown back, offering a full view of her middle-aged face, covered in crow’s feet and gentle smile lines. She was studying Rat with a calculating expression.
“Grab a seat, make yourself at home, whatever. We don’t like to stand on ceremony. My name’s Harmony, but most people call me Harm.”
Rat squinted suspiciously, although she couldn’t find any threat or hostility in the atmosphere around her. “What is this place?” she asked, trying to sound neutral and open-minded.
Harmony’s lips curled into a genuine, if confused, smile. “You really have no idea, do you?”
“I’m not from around here.”
“Sorry, I guess I just assumed. You dress like a prod. Talk like one, too.”
That term was familiar to Rat and she didn’t like it one bit. A ‘prod’ in Nations slang was not a hacker but a hanger-on, a girlfriend at best, trailing along like sheep after some son of a bitch like Jock. The pair of tits behind the man. It took all of Rat’s self-control not to fly off the handle at the insult.
“I’m from the City,” she explained through gritted teeth, “and I don’t belong to nobody.”
“Hey, it makes no difference to me what you are or who you do. That’s your business. Nobody gets asked that unless they’re spies, and we know spies when we see ’em.” Harmony rested her chin on her hands, and her intelligent green eyes took in every detail of Rat’s presence. It was difficult to see in the orange-gold light, but Harmony’s skin seemed the same colour as her mouse-brown hair.
She went on, “Since you asked, think of us as a homeless shelter. Just not the kind that lists in the yellow pages. We care for the people in Laputa who get hung out to dry by the system, those without the dollar to get away. Jobless, unemployable, alone on the fucking streets. Or they would be if it wasn’t for us.”
“Right,” Rat said dryly. This didn’t look like any homeless shelter she’d ever been to, and she’d seen a few. “So who stays here?”
Harmony shrugged. “Mainly prods who break up with their so-called cowboys. Some immigrants stuck in visa limbo, and non-Citizens who aren’t even allowed to have a fucking job. People with nowhere else to turn.”
A little light-bulb clicked on inside Rat’s head. “You mean women.”
Harmony’s face darkened, and for a moment something ugly and dangerous lurked behind her eyes. When she spoke her voice was raw and cold as ice.
“I’d like to meet the man who needs help as much as these girls do. The Nations take good care of their own.”
Then, just as suddenly, she unclouded and smiled at Rat. The edge was gone, as if it had never existed. “Doesn’t matter,” she said dismissively. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. We got clean beds and showers if you need one, the food’s free, and there’s sympathetic ears all over the place. Just ask.”
“Hey, listen, I didn’t come looking for anything,” Rat hurried. “I don’t wanna fuck with your set-up or take what you’ve got. Save it for someone who needs the help.”
Shrugging, Harmony stood up and came to stand face-to-face with Rat, close enough to feel the heat of her breath. Harmony was shorter by an inch or two but her presence made Rat feel like a kid caught in front of her teacher. Those emerald-green eyes seemed to read her like a book.
“When you find someone who needs it,” Harmony whispered, “let me know.”
She slipped a small business card into Rat’s pocket, digital paper showing a female symbol with a number one in the middle, like binary code. It had a wireless key chip on the back.
Rat looked up and felt like she ought to say something. She managed, “Alex, Alex Park. Most people call me Rat.”
Harmony nodded gently. “You got something you want to get off your chest, Alex?”
In that moment Rat froze inside. She wrestled with herself; the desperate need to open up to somebody battered against a lifetime of caution and mistrust, of living on guard day and night without anyone she could rely on. Ugly memories reared their heads from where she’d buried them long ago. She’d be putting her trust in a stranger. That couldn’t happen. Every time the words threatened to come out of her throat, the fear choked them back.
Rat sagged onto one of the bunks and put her head in her hands. “Can I just sit here for a while?” she sighed. “Just, y’know . . . Sit.”
“Do what you want. That’s our code. Anything you need, reach out and take it.” She patted Rat on the shoulder. “You know where to find me.”
Rat nodded gratefully and watched her go. She looked around as the minutes ticked by, still conflicted, hoping that something she saw would clinch the decision for her.
More women came and went around the shelter. They all stopped to greet Rat respectfully, despite not knowing a thing about her, and then went back to whatever they were doing. No one disturbed her beyond that. No one tried to force her to talk.
Some of the newcomers made themselves at home in the bunk beds, or tucked in at the table, or took over on the VR rig in ever-changing shifts. Others came to see Harmony. They would donate stuff or ask for help without embarrassment, all the while treating her with a kind of reverence that bordered on religion.
Then, when nobody was looking, Rat slipped out the door and half-walked, half-ran back to the hotel.
Rat hammered away at the room door until Jock let her in, wearing nothing but an anti-friction VR suit and a bathrobe over the top. His eyes had the glazed look of someone just returning from a long out-of-body trip.
“Oh,” he said, barely even seeing her. “Come in.”
Wordlessly she followed him inside, went straight for the minibar, and downed two cups of sake without blinking. She really wanted to get drunk just now.
“What happened to you?” Jock muttered, shrugging out of his robe, and started to strap back in. The slick, super-tight VR suit made him look like some kind of walking slug. “You look like hell.”
“Nothing. I’m fine.” She didn’t even hesitate with the lie. “What’re you doing?”
He made a vague wave of his hand. “Trying to find out what Gabriel’s doing. He’s good at not leaving a trail, but I think he’s casting for somebody.”
“Who?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. We need to grab whoever it is before Gabriel does.”
Time to get to the point, she thought. Apprehension churned in her stomach, but the questions had to be asked. Taking another sip of sake for courage, she turned to him and tried to look innocent.
“Jock,” she whispered, “have you ever heard of someone called Harmony?”
He stiffened halfway to the next strap and turned to look at her, almost revolving on his feet. His eyes unfogged and his face went serious. “Now where did you hear a name like that?”
She shrugged demurely. She was amazed at his response, but she’d be damned if she gave away anything to him right now. It made her feel a little bit better, not as powerless, knowing stuff that Jock didn’t.
“Harmony Kohler is not somebody you mention lightly in Laputa, Lex,” Jock said, then fell silent, maybe hoping that Rat would volunteer something more. She kept her mouth shut. He went on, “Kohler did some hacking way back when, before the Federation, before the Nations were formed. She was one of the originals who founded Laputa and got the very idea of the Nations underway. She . . . wasn’t very happy with how things turned out.”
Gesturing for him to go on, Rat hung on Jock’s every word.
“After falling out with the other founders over laws and other bullshit, she started a big campaign for women hackers, but nobody was listening by that point. The law was written. Over time her followers just faded away, disbanded, whatever. So she struck out on her own.
“Kohler had some big brass balls, I gotta give her that. She cracked the Nation rankings and put herself on the list with a fake identity, bold as anything. ‘Razorblade’ was her handle. Started taking jobs off the board like she belonged there, even made herself part of the community. Kept it up for years. Nobody suspected the truth, not when she was elected to the Laputan kingship, not even when she got inducted into the Fifteen. She used to use a holomask and a voice changer for live appearances. You just couldn’t tell. We didn’t use detection equipment back then, we didn’t see the need.”
Rat’s eyebrows shot up. “She was in the Fifteen?”
“Under false pretences,” Jock corrected her. “She held a seat for nine fucking years, and ruled Laputa for ten. Then some anonymous hacker tipped off the press. It started a shitstorm like nothing we’d ever seen before, scandals and investigations and more bullshit than I can remember. She was stripped of her ranking. The courts took everything she owned and banished her from the Nations for life. That’s when Hideo took the Laputan elections. Nobody’s seen or heard from Harmony Kohler since.”
As she struggled to keep her shock and awe from showing, Rat wondered, “So you knew her?”
“I knew Razorblade, yeah. I was in the Fifteen a few months before she got exposed. Other than that, no. She was just another hacker in the City at the same time. Nowadays she’s a taboo subject.” He shrugged. “Why the curiosity?”
Rat gave him a doe-eyed look. “Just something I heard, is all.”
Jock didn’t seem convinced. He started to speak, while Rat hurriedly searched for something to say that might distract him. She interrupted, “Wanna fuck?”
A light went on behind his eyes. Instantly Rat knew she’d won. She smiled again, and within seconds he was on top of her, helping her to wrestle out of her restrictive clothes.
