Kzine Issue 7

by Graeme Hurry et al.

  She leaned forward a little, and a little more, eyes fixed on the tracks, lifting her arms slightly away from her sides. Teetering on the brink, she heard the rails sing, and in sudden panic, indecision, she tried to take a step back. But she was weakened, light-headed, she felt her balance falter, falling. Then a hand closed over her arm, jerking her back, and the train hurtled in, inches from her body, punching through the air with a violence and noise that shocked her.

  Her heart racing, breath coming fast, Kit twisted around to try to see the man who held her. He kept hold of her arm, as the train came to a stop, and she found herself leaning on him, her legs trembling. Two of the station staff were approaching. Blue uniforms, name badges, radios in hand, a man and a woman. Of course, they’d seen her on the CCTV, the driver must have seen her too. They’ll call the police, she thought in alarm, they’ll think I’m crazy…

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he was saying to them, before she could gather her thoughts to speak. ‘My wife…’ his grip tightened on her arm momentarily before he let her go, ‘my wife was feeling a little unwell.’

  They were looking at her, dubious, unsatisfied. But she knew her appearance helped, the tailored skirt and jacket, groomed, professional.

  ‘Make sure you stand further back next time, madam,’ the woman said. ‘Not so close to the edge, do you understand?’

  She nodded, dumbly, and they retreated. The train pulled out of the station, crammed full with Monday morning commuters, leaving them standing alone.

  ‘Thank you,’ Kit said shakily. For dealing with the authorities, she realised she’d meant. Not for saving her life. She sat down on the bench, put a hand over her eyes. Come on, Kit, get a grip. When she straightened up, he was still standing there, almost protectively.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, surprised, embarrassed now, not wanting to look at him straight. Glancing at her watch, at the platform information screen, she jumped up, realising she was late, reaching for her phone. It wasn’t there.

  ‘Don’t worry, I messaged your boss, said you were sick.’ He handed the phone back to her, and she grabbed it, startled.

  ‘You did what?’ She checked it, then slipped it quickly back into her handbag, clutching it close. ‘How did you…? Why?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ he said. Then, with a friendly smile: ‘You need to come with me, Katarina.’

  She looked up at him properly for the first time. He looked strong, with that physical confidence manual labourers have, and he smelled clean, like fresh cotton. Dark blond hair and the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.

  ‘Why not?’ Kit said, her mind suddenly freewheeling, reckless with borrowed time.

  ‘No one calls me Katarina,’ she said as they walked. ‘No one’s called me that for years. My name’s Kit.’

  ‘You can call me Bear,’ he said.

  She laughed.

  ‘Really? That’s your actual name?’ She gave him a quick glance. ‘It suits you. Where’d you get Katarina from anyway?’

  ‘It’s on your ID badge.’ He gestured to the little card dangling at her hip. ‘I know a bit about you, anyway, I’ve been watching you for a while.’

  ‘Watching me?’ Kit felt a slight shiver run through her. ‘Seriously? That’s kind of weird.’

  ‘Everyone’s watching everyone,’ he said casually. ‘You see those personal ads in the Metro every day? You know the kind of thing. To the slim dark-haired girl with the expensive shoes and fabulous balance, let me buy you a coffee sometime?’ He gave her a quick glance. ‘And a sandwich.’

  ‘Those ads creep me out,’ Kit said.

  They took the train from the opposite platform: eastbound, empty, and heading out of the city. Bear stood back as the doors hissed open, letting her step on first. Courtesy, maybe, though she noticed how he moved close to block the way behind her. Her eyes flicked to the door at the end of the deserted car. I could run. But no. What do I have to be afraid of? I’m not even supposed to be here…

  ‘Aren’t you afraid of coming with a strange man?’ he asked, as though he guessed her thoughts. ‘Didn’t your mother teach you about things like that?’

  ‘My mother? We don’t talk much.’ And Kit didn’t want to talk about that. She flashed him a sidelong smile instead.

  ‘Did nobody tell you about picking up random strangers? I’m not exactly mentally stable right now, you might have noticed. I could kill you.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ he said, good-naturedly, as though stating a simple fact. Which was reasonable enough, Kit thought, he must be twice her weight, and more than twice as strong. But then he didn’t know about the flick-knife in her inside pocket, always there, you couldn’t be too careful these days. She felt as safe as she wanted to be.

  Kit reached to touch the knife for reassurance. It was gone.

  Down, down under the derelict factory building that stood amid crumbling warehouses in the post-industrial wasteland downriver to the east of the city, Kit looked around in amazement.

  ‘It looks like it’s alive,’ she said in wonder. The air inside the ship was warm and slightly humid, and seemed to pulse like the breath of a living thing.

  ‘It is alive,’ Jana said.

  Jana was a short, sturdy woman, maybe forty, her hair an unnatural dark red, tucked back casually behind her ears. She’d looked Kit up and down with a cool appraising stare, when Bear led her into the small office-like room on the ground floor of the factory. Hands in the pockets of her masculine suit, making Kit feel frivolous and girlish. She’d stood to her full height, taller than Jana, at least with the three inches the spindly heels gave her.

  ‘We’re recruiting.’ Jana had said. ‘We need someone from inside the banking industry, someone willing to… help us.’

  So that was it, Kit had thought. Demonstrations, riots, protests, everywhere you turned these days.

  ‘I’m not what you’re looking for,’ she’d said. Did she feel relief? Disappointment? ‘I’m not a banker, not the way you think. I’m a software analyst, I just look after the systems.’

  ‘That’s exactly what we’re looking for,’ Jana said with a hard smile.

  ‘Are you the ones behind those protest camps?’ Kit had asked, confused, still not understanding.

  ‘That bunch of dirty hippies?’ Jana said. ‘No. Though we’ve got people in among them, they’re doing good work for us, paving the way.’

  ‘Paving the way for what?’ Kit glanced around at Bear, then back at Jana. ‘Who are you, anyway?’

  And then they’d shown her. Hidden in the deep waters of the dock, where years ago boats were moored for loading and unloading goods; the ship that had brought them from another world.

  Jana outlined what they wanted her to do. Introduce technical glitches into the algorithmic trading systems, unleash a torrent of erroneous trades. That would lose the bank billions, crash the share price, send the markets into an uncontrolled spin of volatility. Hadn’t there been enough of that lately? It would also get her fired, if she was lucky, and prosecuted too if she wasn’t. It’s madness, Kit thought, I can’t do this, I can’t be here. She looked around for a way out, the door they’d come in by seemed to have sealed itself into the wall.

  Jana was still talking, something about helping the people to bring down the system that oppressed them. Kit stopped listening. She felt hot, her eyes blurry.

  ‘Kit?’ Bear’s voice seemed to come from far away. ‘Are you all right? You look a bit…’

  He was already moving towards her as her vision started to go black around the edges, and suddenly her legs wouldn’t hold her up any more. But it was Jana who caught hold of her as she fell, strong hands holding her firmly, easing her into a chair.

  Bear knelt down beside her, a steadying arm around her shoulders, looking at her with concern.

  ‘Kit? What’s the matter, are you sick?’

  ‘No…’ She tried to push him away, and made herself sit up, her head swimming.

  Jana stood regarding her with an impassive stare. K
it saw herself through the older woman’s eyes, knew what she saw, the sharp exposed curve of a cheekbone, the impeccable jutting of her collarbones. Perfection, sculpted by months of finely tuned deprivation and discipline.

  ‘When did you last eat something?’ Jana asked bluntly.

  ‘I… I don’t remember,’ Kit lied.

  ‘Of course you do.’ Her voice, whip-sharp. ‘You remember exactly when, and what, and how many calories. I know what you girls are like. Your little sub-culture.’

  You don’t know, Kit wanted to say, but she had to force herself to take deep breaths of the warm soupy air instead. Jana shook her head dismissively.

  ‘Here, drink this.’ She pushed the plastic bottle across the table towards Kit, one of those lurid orange-coloured sports drinks. ‘Drink it. A hundred and ninety three kcals. It won’t make you fat, it will get you back on your feet.’

  Flipping the top with trembling fingers, Kit put it tentatively to her lips. The sharp chemical smell of it, not like food or drink at all, that made it easier. She took a sip, sugary sweet.

  ‘You really think she’ll be any use?’ Jana was asking Bear. ‘Look at her, she’s a mess.’

  ‘They all are, one way or another.’ He shrugged. ‘The good ones, anyway. She’s tougher than she looks.’

  ‘These ana girls have discipline, at least,’ Jana allowed. ‘Commitment.’

  Pride, Kit said silently, and sat up straighter. Sugar sparkled through her body.

  ‘Fine,’ Jana said, her eyes flicking back to Kit. ‘But you keel over like that again, and we’ll tube feed you.’

  ‘You won’t,’ Kit gave a slight shudder. ‘I’m not stupid. It’s under control.’ And it was, most of the time anyway. There was a fine line between perfection and starvation, but she walked it well.

  ‘Let’s sign you up, then.’ Jana gripped her left wrist, pushed up her sleeve, raising an eyebrow at the old razor slashes banded up and down her forearm. ‘This is going to hurt.’

  ‘I’m good with pain,’ Kit said lightly, but even she tried to pull away when she saw the size of the syringe. ‘Wait, what is that…?’

  Bear caught hold of her, pushing her back into the chair, holding her still.

  ‘Don’t look,’ he said, and she turned her face away. His voice was gentle in her ear: ‘I’m sorry.’ Pain flared up her arm, and then it was done. Bear let her go, and she got up, shaking, staring at them both in shock. Her arm was hot and swollen.

  ‘Don’t even think of trying to remove it,’ Jana said.

  ‘What did you do to me?’ Kit demanded. ‘I didn’t say you could…’

  ‘You work for us, we keep track of you. That’s how it is.’

  ‘I never said I’d work for you.’ Kit was struggling to keep the note of panic out of her voice, keep it cool and disinterested. ‘How do I even know any of this is true. You look like us. You talk like you’re from here, exactly like.’

  ‘We’ve studied your world’s languages and cultures,’ Jana said. ‘And your genetics. We find you respond best this way.’

  You knew what I’d respond to, Kit thought with a glance at Bear.

  ‘What do I get out of any of this?’ she asked at last, and Jana gave her a look that made her feel like an errant schoolgirl, a look of such disappointment and rebuke that she felt genuinely shamed.

  ‘We can’t reward you with money or status,’ Jana said. ‘That isn’t what we do. But we can give you the chance to be part of something wonderful. To change the world for the better.’

  ‘Maybe I like the world the way it is,’ Kit said, stung by the reproof, her arm aching.

  ‘Do you?’ Jana’s voice softened suddenly. ‘You were in a hurry to leave it, just an hour ago.’

  She knows. ‘I wasn’t going to…’

  ‘You were. Why? Katarina, look at me.’

  ‘I don’t know why.’ Kit rubbed a hand angrily across her face, fighting back the tears that if allowed to start would never stop. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because now you have something important to do,’ Jana replied simply. ‘Here, this is yours.’

  Jana tossed the folded knife towards her suddenly, and Kit snatched at it blindly, off-guard, expecting to fumble the catch. Instead her fingers closed around it, hard and solid in her palm.

  ‘Go on,’ Jana said. ‘Go and change your life.’

  Next morning, as Kit arrived at work, the anti-capitalist camp outside the office seemed to have grown overnight and smelled worse than ever. The protesters were already noisily milling around. Kit checked her watch in surprise. A normal day, most of them didn’t crawl out of their tents until mid-morning, until she’d already done a good two, three hours at her desk. Several of the ground floor windows had been smashed and boarded up. On the corner a plump but malnourished-looking family waited for the food bank to open, the mother staring blankly at Kit with sad-cow eyes.

  Extra security on the door today, Kit flashed her id badge at one of the guards and he opened the door for her. Then a bright brittle voice behind her.

  ‘Kit, hey, how are you?’

  ‘Sharran. I’m good,’ Kit said, even though she wasn’t, none of them were. They walked in side by side, spike-heeled strides across the mosaic marble floor. Reflected in the gilded mirrored doors, slender and hard-edged, immaculate, hair swinging shiny.

  ‘Our friends are up early this morning,’ Kit commented, nodding towards the commotion outside.

  ‘Didn’t you hear what happened last night? The wealth management guys up on the third floor, they sprayed them with champagne from the windows.’

  ‘No way. Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously. They’re saying next time they’re going to throw bunches of twenties.’

  ‘Ha.’ Kit gave a little snick of laughter. ‘Guess we’ll see who doesn’t believe in personal wealth then.’

  They stopped at the cafeteria, skirting quickly around the greasy nauseating smell of the breakfast food counter.

  ‘Here’s what I don’t understand,’ Sharran said, hitting the well-worn button for skinny cappuccino, the low-cal choice, all fat-free froth. ‘If they’re as poor as all that, how come they’re so fat? I mean, have you seen the state of some of them?’

  You couldn’t argue with that. There were reasons, of course, you read about it. Cheap sugar, junk food, empty calories, society was to blame. At least, that’s what they said. Kit took her coffee straight and black.

  ‘Don’t you ever wonder,’ she asked, as they headed for their desks. ‘Why we do all this. I mean, why we get up every morning and come here, why we do any of it?’

  Sharran looked at her strangely. No one talked like that. You just didn’t do it. You started talking like that, and it’d have you thinking funny, and that was how you ended up like one of those earnest hippies outside, or jumping ship to low pay and frumpy shoes in academia.

  ‘You’re coming out for drinks tonight, aren’t you? Brown’s at seven? Sounds like you need it.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Kit was flicking one-handed through her email. ‘Got a full-on day, looks like.’ Plus a nagging ache in my arm, and something I’m supposed to do after you’ve all left tonight…

  ‘Oh go on, come with me.’ And there was the needy plea for validation, showing just for a second. ‘You know what they say, right?’

  ‘Work hard, play hard,’ Kit said flatly.

  ‘That’s my girl.’

  Kit wasn’t feeling it tonight. Sharran was lingering at the bar, flirting desperately, leaving Kit on her own at their table in the corner, wondering how much she’d need to drink to forget. Artur came lurching over to her, bottle in his hand.

  ‘Kit, all alone. Help me finish this.’

  ‘No…’ she began, reaching out too late as he sloshed the red clumsily into her half-finished glass of dry white. ‘What did you do that for?’

  But she drank it anyway, while Artur drained the bottle. After, he began to kiss her awkwardly, tried to put his tongue in her mouth. Kit turned her fa
ce away, sliding against the wall. He licked her cheek instead. She shoved him away then and he protested, his eyes hurt and sullen.

  ‘Come on, Kit, don’t be a bitch. What’s the matter with you.’

  ‘Just no, all right?’

  She left just before they started doing shots, took the train home sooner than queue for a cab, and got out to walk the short distance from the station. The riots that broke out regularly after dark rarely reached this far from the city centre, and the streets were empty, though somewhere a dog barked and there was a distant smell of burning in the air.

  Kit slipped off her shoes and picked them up, the cool pavement a relief to her aching feet. Her head fuzzy from too much wine, she had to concentrate to side-step the broken glass on the pavement. Easy enough to see even in the dimly lit street, but in any case she’d sooner cut her feet than damage the shoes. Five hundred euros of fine craftsmanship and exquisite painful beauty right there in her hand.

  Then footsteps right behind her, she kept walking, glanced sharply over her shoulder.

  ‘What, are you following me now?’ she demanded.

  ‘The city’s dangerous at night,’ Bear said.

  ‘Who are you, my daddy? My guardian angel?’ She was laughing, remembering the absurd life-saving incident, you couldn’t make it up. ‘I can take care of myself, you know.’ She knew she was slurring her words slightly.

  He stayed close, at her shoulder, just behind her in the corner of her vision.

  ‘You’re a little bit… impaired. You shouldn’t drink so much without eating.’

  ‘I shouldn’t drink so much at all.’ Kit shrugged. ‘But it’s a free country, right? For now.’ She swerved aside to avoid the shattered fragments of glass that suddenly glittered in front of her, stumbled into him, and he caught her arm to steady her.

  ‘Careful. Look, there’s more. Kit, you should put your shoes on.’

  ‘They hurt. Anyway, cuts heal, these cost a fortune and they don’t.’ She saw his look. ‘That sounds crazy to you, doesn’t it?’