Anna gazed into the patterns dancing in the air, wondering why the wind fought so hard to keep the water from falling. A flash of cold paralyzed her for a moment; the withdrawal had gone from hot that kept her almost comfortable out here into the chills phase. She sank into a squat and clutched at the umbrella handle. Diving into the North Sea in February would have felt warmer than she did at that moment. Each gust of wind rattled her teeth and chased feeling from her fingers and toes.
The gale threatened to tear the umbrella out of her grip. Not wanting to lose something she paid twenty whole credits for, she collapsed it and let the rain hit her in the face. At this altitude, the droplets flew at her sideways, rendering the umbrella moot anyway. Within a few minutes, the sensation passed and the hot phase returned. Soaked through, it was almost pleasant.
Orange grumbled, his body twitching as if he had let out a one-second chuckle at something a touch shy of being humorous. Anna glanced at him, wondering what he saw in cyberspace to elicit such a noise. Was he amused by something, or fighting for his life? Anna had worked with hackers before, hearing them speak of what it was like on the other side in a virtual world as real as this one, only death meant an hour of misery rather than the end of one’s life. She could never know what it was like; cyberware was out of the question. She couldn’t keep a NetMini for more than a week without frying it. Electronics inside her would be a disastrous idea.
Anna nibbled on her fingernails, finally taking a good look at the defenseless man Carroll was paying her to protect. He was not harsh upon the eyes, and not the sort of man who would have shown up at the club to watch her dance. He exuded high class, or at least higher-class than those idiots. She fantasized about having a man sweep her off her feet and save her from her wretched life, carrying her off into the sunset like the knight from the vids she used to watch. Her head clanked against the metal behind her.
Who am I kidding? They’re called fairytales for a reason.
Orange grunted again; this time, she was sure the sheen on his forehead was sweat and not rain. Curious, she peered at his surface thoughts. Flashes of hallway, white and black marble, passed as flakes of chipped stone flew amid the echo of gunfire. With a submachine gun in his left hand and a katana in his right, he fought a wall of creatures, shadowy things that looked like men only somehow more alien. She leaned back, letting the mental link drop.
Maybe the zoom changed things on her. Sometimes the hallucinations came back when your brain starves for it, only they would be dark and threatening. The drug made you see things depending on where your head was at the moment; some said it brought out your inner personality. She usually saw pixies and cute things, but sometimes there would be an ogre with her father’s face.
Those were the bad trips.
A pneumatic hiss made her head snap up. Rain threaded off her nose into a rivulet. Cold embraced her in every sense of the word. Heavy boots thudded into the concrete. Orange was still a zombie. A little red umbrella peeked up over the roof. She stood and looked in the direction of the approaching boots. Deep and foreboding, a man’s voice echoed through the sound of the rain.
“Gotta be over ‘ere.”
“Yep. Got two on thermal.”
Shit.
Anna forced her twitching muscles to still themselves. With a gulp, she balled her hands into fists and waited. Two men, both over six foot, came around the corner. Glistening grey armor covered their entire bodies, a blue BT logo emblazoned upon the corner of their chest. Each had a rifle aimed forward in a one handed grip. One frowned at Orange, the other looked at Anna and his gaze softened.
These two did not look like constables, rather private security employed by BT. If Anna and Orange were not shot and dumped in the Thames, they would likely be stuffed in a holding facility somewhere in the building with no trial, held at the whim of some executive. Illegal though it was, Old Bill could not care about things Old Bill was not aware of.
“Looks like we got a snoop what brought his strung-out bird along.”
Their size scared her witless for an instant, until she sensed the augmentation in them. Either was probably strong enough to toss a car on its side one-handed. On the turn of a dime, mouse became cat. She stepped away from Orange, advancing a pace towards them.
“You two best be on your way then, this doesn’t concern you. No ‘arm to BT, just borrowin’ a backbone connect.”
They exchanged a disbelieving glance. The one on the left chuckled while the other spoke.
“Who the hell do you think you are? Get on the ground, now.”
“Really, I don’t want to hurt you. Piss off then, and forget you saw us.”
Grimacing through a muscle cramp in her left thigh, she tilted her head. His laugh stalled as something by the edge of the roof caught his attention; nothing was there when she looked at the spot.
“Look, hon, you’re young, you’re pretty, and you got no weapons. Don’t give us an excuse to break that sweet little face.”
Her hands shook. The trembles were on her, and they would not stop for some time yet. Adrenaline soaked into her dried-up brain. She’d slipped into a cold spot again, all her body wanted to do was shiver. The headache formed a wall between her and her power. The security men got closer. One raised his weapon at her. Anna tried to focus through the feeling of a skull packed with cotton balls. She glanced at Orange, helpless. She felt stupid for even thinking she could do this.
“Not telling you again girl, get on your face.”
Come on! Damn drugs…
A fist grabbed her by the collar, tightening a bundle of jacket against her neck. She cringed.
Calm down. She brought the sound of Penny begging the Crossman to let her go into her mind. The memory of how it felt to surge with power crept in behind it. Anna raised her arms as if to surrender. Her body shuddered, but she let herself go.
With a crack like a gunshot, a narrow spark leapt from the tip of the obelisk and struck her in the back. The guard holding her jumped away, howling and shaking his hand. The beautiful amber filigree of subdermal wiring traced over their bodies, outlining all their implants. She reached for the transmitter array, clawing through the air at the two men. She grasped the power, pulling it out of the machinery and willing it into the world. A web of lightning arced from the corners of the metal box, scoring burns across their armor and knocking them flat to the ground. They skidded back several meters into the wall of the elevator enclosure.
She tugged her coat back into place and made a ‘come here’ motion at their weapons. The power cell for their rifles’ firing circuits dissipated in a tiny crawling shimmer of blue along the wet roof. Their guns went dark, the absence of glowing LEDs revealing their uselessness. Anna glanced at Orange, wishing he would hurry up and be done with whatever he was doing. He still knelt in silent meditation, a techno-Buddhist lost in a world imagined by machines.
Anna swayed into the vibrating chamber of fiber optics, her touch sent little arcs creeping in two directions along the frame; a one-handed grip kept her from falling to the ground. Her hands shook, her legs twitched, and the roof wavered back and forth in her vision. Bile leaked through her lips, trailing to join the water she stood in. Hot and cold came one after the other, so fast they blended into an entirely new level of awfulness.
A moan emanated from one of the security men as he sat up. With an exasperated grunt, Anna latched her mind onto the power lines in the elevator system and created a blooming orb of lightning six meters around. The security men convulsed for several seconds before she released the power. Both collapsed flat, steaming and moaning. She was nowhere near as angry as she was in the alley. Penny was not in danger; her body could only handle so much power so soon after that night. Anna swooned to her knees, sparks dancing out from where her hands touched wet metal. Pain like a dagger through the skull set her heaving. She would have thrown up again if not for having an empty stomach.
“What the hell…”
Orange was awake.
“Well fuck me, you really are a psio. Carroll wasn’t dicking around this time.”
He slammed the panel closed like a mechanic having finished his work. She forced herself up and zombie-walked over to him, no longer possessed of the energy necessary to hide how bad a state she was in.
Orange caught her fall and pulled her into a platonic embrace. “Easy Pixie, guess that took a lot out of you.”
He doesn’t know I’m a drugged out wreck. “Yeah…”
“No worries lass. I’m good with secrets.”
“Thanks.”
Associating with people that operated outside the law provided some comfort. He would be disinclined to approach the government to report an unregistered because they would ask him questions he did not want to answer. Anna did her best to walk as he pulled her along to the edge of the roof. The sound of the rain upon the tiny lake they stood in gave way to the spectral keening of razor wire being cut and peeled. Doing it one handed slowed him down; Anna glanced over at the moaning of the security men as they stirred.
“Sorry I’m spent so fast. Not quite the protection you asked for.”
“No harm, girl. I needed protection when I was online, not so much now.”
Time blinked out of existence for her until she felt something tightening around her wrists, binding them together.
Plastic zip ties.
“Ow! What the hell are you doing? I thought…”
“Trust me… You’re in no condition to hold on to anything but the floor.”
He turned his back on her, and pulled her arms over his head, wearing her like a living cape. As the scrapes of the security armor signaled the men were standing, Orange stepped off the roof. Anna clung as hard as she could, which was not much, and breathed into the thick bundle of synthetic wool at the base of his neck.
All the wind in her chest burst out as their fall slammed into a sudden deceleration. Gasping for air, she ignored the pain in her arms and looked up at a one by three foot rectangle connected to Orange’s shoulders by hair-thin cables, stark ashen grey against the near black of the sky. The edges rimmed with yellow light from the glow of micro ion emitters. Too weak to propel them in flight, they gave only enough thrust to increase the effect of the tiny airfoil to that of a large parachute.
Her head to the side, Anna recoiled from the sweeping line of a laser sight―the security men searching for them in the dark. Orange chased the updrafts between buildings on Long Acre, heading southwest to a gentle landing in the middle of Leicester Gardens. The parafoil split in half, each piece folding into itself twice more before vanishing into compartments in the upper portion of cybernetic shoulders.
“You’re just full of surprises, Mr. Orange.”
The binding around her wrists came apart with the flick of a small knife; she hit the grass like a sack of wheat. Sprawled in the wet, she sat up and braced her fingers through the cold green behind her. A silly smile happened despite a body that wouldn’t stop twitching.
“You’re in rougher shape than I thought, girl.” He shook his head, clucking his tongue. “On the rattle, eh? Well… Good luck to you. Can’t imagine what your lot goes through.”
She would have shrugged, but did not want to fall over backwards.
Orange crouched, pulling her upright. “Look here, Pixie, is it? There’s a man over at Oxford… Doctor Mardling if I recall properly. I’ve seen some stuff in the net ‘bout him. He helps people like you, and he doesn’t much like the government. Rather hates their treatment of psionics.”
“M-Mardling?” she asked, before losing control to a seizure.
Orange’s voice swirled into the oblivion of her unconsciousness as he muttered something about not wanting to leave her out there. He sighed as she collapsed in the grass, unable to stand on her own. Arms tightened around her, followed by a sense of being lifted.
She did not care what he did to her; anything was better than how she felt.
lurry pea green haze hovered over her, indistinct in its distance or composition. Weightless, Anna drifted in a swath of time detached from the world. Dull aches teased at her muscles and the sound of each breath sliding in and out rushed like a gale through her skull. A faint breeze tickled and plucked at individual hairs. Her hands ached, and she remembered Mr. Orange.
It seemed she had been left within the drab confines of a motel room that explored every imaginable shade of vomit green. With a moan, she raised her left hand to her forehead and rubbed it, forcing her fingers through her hair and trying to dislodge the anvil balanced there. A line of bruise wrapped around each wrist; the sight dragged the parachute landing back from the depths of her memory.
Something on her arm brushed her nose, and she froze. Lifting it up from her face, she stared at the zoomer adhered to the tender skin. Seeing it brought rage and despair, screaming and tears. She could not remember how it got there, but she also could not find most of yesterday in the dark halls of her mind. Her arm flew, pounding a fist into the bed at her side.
“Damn!” All that hell for nothing.
Curling on her side, her eyes followed a trail of clothes between the bed and the autoshower. She stared at the derm, picking at the edge with her nails. She wanted to pull it off, but something inside her couldn’t do it.
Sobbing, she berated herself for buying the zoom. She knew how bad the quitting would be, especially cold turkey, and had chickened out before she chickened out. Anna wailed; she clawed at the derm, scratching red lines through her ashen skin. The little beige square might as well have been an impenetrable manacle chaining her to Coventry.
“No, no, no.”
Clutching her arm to her forehead, she bawled, cursing herself and her life. Moments later, she opened her eyes. Spawny’s jacket, draped over a little chair tucked up to a table near the bed, shimmered into focus. Two more zoomers waited in the pocket. If she put them both on at once and milked them, there was a good chance her problems would come to an end. Anna pushed herself up, sitting at the edge of the bed in a fog.
The chilly room brought shivers in time with surges of driving rain against the window. Anna stared down at her protruding ribs, her thin bony legs and prominent hips. Credits that should have gone to food had bought more chemical chains so she could tie herself to this misery. She did not want to go back to the club, or be a plaything for the police, or continue to wallow at the edge of a society that did not want her. Her own father had been ready to kill her.
Father knows best, right?
She wobbled to her feet and approached the jacket, peering into the gaping darkness of the pocket. Naked in a cheap motel, high, and with red marks on her wrists, the shame of what the sight would imply sent her to her knees. Face in the cushion of the chair, she rummaged at the coat until she found the sheet. Thin white plasfilm gleamed in the grey light from the window; the skin-hued bits of rubber beckoned with the offer of bliss or permanent release.
Anna lost track of time, kneeling and staring at the drugs as she pondered her life. She had agreed to go back to the art class later that afternoon. The thought of the two dozen sketches of “Innocent Anna” there sent warm streaks down her face and balled her hands into fists. She imagined the angelic versions of her moving, turning to look at her and laughing, pointing, and mocking the whore with no willpower.
They’re all lying to me.
She punched the back of the chair, knocking it into the desk, dropped the sheet of derms, and fell on her side on scratchy, worn green carpet with her face buried in her hands. Something bounced away from her thigh and hit the floor. A small black plastic ingot sat amid the green haze. It sprouted tiny arms and tried to drag itself to her, grunting. Anna chased the hallucination away and blinked at a device the size of her thumb, but flat and rectangular. As thick th
rough as a coffee stirrer, it had one button on its otherwise featureless surface.
At a squeeze, it created a holographic light panel that unfolded through the air. Within, the face of a man hung above a monochromatic green background. He looked in his thirties, with shoulder-length brown hair and a precisely sculpted goatee and moustache. His nose was distinguished, almost prominent, and his right eyebrow lifted a touch as if he wanted to convey the secret of enlightenment. The face smiled as it rotated a quarter turn; text filled in to his right.
“Anna, apologies for leaving you alone last night, but I am bound to certain deadlines by certain individuals that despise tardiness. Don’t worry about the room, I’ve taken care of the fee. This is the man I mentioned regarding your problem. Doctor James Mardling, of Oxford, he might be able to help you with your issue.
Cheers,
Mr. Orange.”
Anna blinked. She was high, but the feeling of the holographic man smiling at her seemed more real than part of a looping animation or hallucination. She traced her fingers through the image as if petting the hair of a doll.
Can this bloke do a bloody thing for a worthless wretch?
A man’s voice blurred through the door. Shadows moved through the light leaking underneath. She gasped, and covered herself as if being watched.
The voice from the hall yelled. “Blimey, get away. For the last time, I don’t want a bloody umbrella, damn nuisances.”
Those bots are relentless. She relaxed.
Anna fussed over the crinkled derm sheet to make sure the doses were intact. Faye and Penny’s faces came to mind and made her feel even more ashamed for considering checking out. She wrapped her arms around herself, crying, as she pictured Penny’s reaction to learning she had committed suicide; then her brain forced her through a hallucination of walking in to find Faye dead.
Somehow, the younger girl had come to represent Anna’s destroyed childhood. She’d known her for a week, but it felt like she’d stepped in as a temporary mum. Faye still had a chance. She couldn’t let the same things happen to her.
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