Company Town

by Madeline Ashby

  “Being stupid is fun, sometimes.”

  “Is it like sex? Because everyone acts like it’s really important, but it just seems…” He wrinkled his nose. “Messy. And possibly painful.”

  Hwa swallowed in a dry throat. She reminded herself that she was a grown-ass woman much older than Joel. She was the adult. She could handle this. Hwa spotted the tap kit and picked up her pace. “If we’re going to keep talking about this, we’re going to have to start drinking.”

  She picked a bourbon aged in cherrywood casks that promised a medium-bodied drink with notes of heather, vanilla, clove, and leather. At that particular moment, she would have taken hull cleaner. She opened the tap and poured off two measures into tiny sampling glasses.

  “These glasses look funny,” Joel said.

  “They’re antique insulators.” Hwa peered at the glasses to make sure they were equal. “Like on old transformers.”

  “Cool.” Joel took down all his bourbon in one drink. There was one terrible moment when he looked like he’d swallowed a bunch of broken glass. His eyes watered. His lips puckered. Then he coughed so hard he had to bend over. “What the hell is that?”

  Hwa took a more delicate—ladylike, even—sip of hers. “It’s a medium-bodied bourbon, with notes of heather, vanilla, clove, and leather.”

  “It tastes like licking my dad’s desk chair.”

  “Your tongue ages along with the rest of your body, you know. So you taste different stuff as you get older.” Hwa checked the PO for Rivaudais’s bar. “Huh. You lucked out. We’re not moving too many cases.”

  Joel goggled at her. “That’s what we’re here for? To move product?”

  “Aye. Rivaudais owns a bar. This is a place that distills alcohol and sells it wholesale. What did you think we were at?”

  Joel pointed at the two insulator caps in her hands. “Sampling!”

  It was hard to make a pshaw motion when both her hands were full of pricey artisanal bourbon. “Come on. You wanted to lift weights? These are the weights.”

  Joel now looked significantly less impressed with the whole operation. “Don’t they have people for that?”

  “Yes. Us. We’re the people.” Hwa had a feeling this second sample would taste a bit better with some ice. It needed more time to open up. Where it was once sharp and grassy and green, it now tasted more heady and floral. She took a picture of the barrels with her specs. She wanted to remember this one.

  “You’ve got good taste,” Captain Matthews said, from down the aisle. “That one’s special to me. We used rainwater from Ireland.”

  Hwa gave him what she knew to be a very skeptical look.

  “No, really! We have catchment clients. My water taster said it really made a difference.”

  “Your water taster is robbing you blind,” Hwa said.

  “So it’s not a great batch?”

  “Of course it’s a great batch. But the water makes no difference. It’s all the barrels.” She stuck her tongue out. “I’m a hundred percent organic. I know these things. I taste better than other people.”

  Matthews leaned against some barrels. Dimples appeared in his smile. “Well, now. That’s quite the claim.”

  Joel’s hand landed heavily on her shoulder and curled into it. “My bodyguard and I have some cases to lift,” he said, suddenly all seriousness.

  They had to fetch the cases of bourbon from the retail area and bring them to be weighed, then take them all via hand truck and jitney to the Aviation and load them into the barback’s area. Why Rivaudais never had the barback himself do the job, Hwa didn’t know. She suspected he simply didn’t trust him not to pocket something on the way. That was why she did a lot of small jobs like this, she explained to Joel, as they wheeled all the cases of liquor to the weigh station. People trusted her.

  “I think it’s ’cause I don’t have any augments. I have an honest face.”

  “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.” Joel tugged on a pair of gloves one of the men had given him, and lifted a case. He began walking it to the weigh station.

  “Hold on!” Hwa darted around from her cart. “We have to zero it out, first. Keep lifting that. It’s good for you.”

  “Am I lifting it right?”

  “Yes.” She smiled. “You are. You lifted from your knees. That was the right way to do it.”

  He huffed his bangs. “Well, get to it. My arms won’t hold out.”

  Hwa jumped on the weigh station. It was nothing more than a black platform set away from the racks of barrels. Two flats of barrels stood beside it. Each barrel had a weight-by-liquid-volume stamped on it, and then a secondary stamp indicating whether it met the acceptable minimum. They’d all met the right weight. Captain Matthews, for all his shirtless, barefoot lassitude, ran a tight ship.

  “Shame you can’t pick up some more from us,” she heard him say.

  “Les loyers,” Rivaudais said. Hwa turned. Rivaudais was jerking his thumb up in the air. The rents were going up. No wonder Rivaudais couldn’t afford more merchandise. Joel watched her, oblivious. Of course they wouldn’t say this in front of him. His dad was the one raising the rent.

  “I’m getting another cart,” Joel said.

  “What? Okay. Hold on.” Hwa tapped the panel on the weigh station. She tilted her head and took off her specs. Maybe she was looking a little healthier, but she hadn’t tripled in size since her last weigh-in. “Get off the platform, Joel.”

  The numbers danced in the panel. Fell. Back to her normal weight. Then they rose again. Like lottery numbers, rolling up and up and up. How was he doing that? It was like he was bouncing high in the air over the platform and then silently crashing back down onto it. Maybe he had some special high-tech Lynch Ltd. toy that made it all possible. She’d dragged him here and now he was punishing her for it. She put her specs back on.

  “I mean it, Joel. Quit it.”

  He was right behind her. She could feel him—the glee at his stupid teenage boy prank radiating off him as heat. She turned to face him. “Seriously, quit—”

  No one was there.

  “Quit what?” Joel was hunched over another cart of cases. He frowned and moved to join her on the platform. “Who are you talking to?”

  Behind her, there was a long, yawning creak. An audible sloshing. The sound of something snapping. Wood. Something cold and hard solidified in her stomach. Time seemed to stretch out, as though adrenaline itself could somehow pull the fibres of space and time just a little bit more taut.

  “Joel! Run!”

  But he just stood there, staring, and he kept staring even when she stumbled off the platform and rushed him. She grabbed him around the waist and snapped him up like she was doing a lift in a match. Then she veered to the left and carried him into the retail room and shut the door.

  From behind reinforced glass, they watched the whole flat of barrels nearest the weigh station roll down from their perch and spill across the floor.

  “Oh, no,” Joel said. “All that product…”

  Hwa whirled. “Are you shitting me? You’re worried about the bourbon?” She bent down and rested her hands on her knees. “We almost got pancaked there, you know.”

  “Yeah.” Joel looked at himself, and then at her. To her surprise, he grinned. His smile stretched wider than she’d ever seen it. “You know, you could have thrown your back out, lifting me like that. It wasn’t exactly the correct technique.”

  Hwa reached over and tousled his hair. “Very funny.”

  * * *

  In a ride on the way back to school, Joel asked her not to tell anyone what had happened. “Because nothing happened,” he said. “It was just an accident. And besides, you’ll get in trouble. I don’t think moving crates of bourbon was what my dad had in mind when he hired a physical trainer.”

  “You’re right,” Hwa said. “But lying will make things worse.”

  “I didn’t get hurt,” Joel insisted. “Isn’t that what matters? I’m less sore now than I would b
e after a day of training. And I learned something about the city! Isn’t that what I’m supposed to be doing? I’m the one who’s going to take over here, someday. I should start learning everything I need to know.”

  Hwa shrugged. “If you say so.”

  “He didn’t tell me about the death threats. So I don’t have to tell him everything, either.”

  Oh. That explained some things.

  “Have you talked to him about that?”

  Joel shook his head. “He’s been sick. More sick than usual.” He stretched. Hwa heard something pop in his spine. “I guess that’s the other reason I don’t want him to know. I don’t think it would help.”

  Hwa settled back in her seat. She reclined it. Closed her eyes. “Okay. Fine.”

  It wasn’t okay, and it wasn’t fine. Eventually—probably very soon—Joel’s dad or one of his brothers would find out, and freak out. On the other hand, she had told Síofra where they were going, and he hadn’t objected. They had some cover, at least.

  And, she figured, the whole story would go over a lot better if she had more details on the invisible man who had attacked them today.

  “Why don’t you come over for dinner?” Joel asked, when the ride stopped.

  “Thanks, but maybe Sunday,” Hwa said. “Right now I’m craving something from the chip truck.”

  * * *

  It was very difficult, not eating the chips from the chip truck. She’d ordered the largest size they had, with extra vinegar and extra salt. The smell was so good, so heady, that the other people in the elevator that stood at the nine o’clock position in Tower Four had no choice but to stare. That, or they knew exactly whom she was summoning.

  It wasn’t until she hit the seventeenth floor that she suspected Lázló might have joined her. The lift doors hung open for just a hair longer than they should have. She felt nothing, no bounce in the lift, just that little pause in which the machine seemed to decide something on its own.

  “Is that you?” Hwa asked. “’Cause the chip oil’s burning me fingers.”

  After a moment, she felt the paper packet of potatoes lift out of her hands. They hovered for a moment, and then seemed to vanish in a wrinkle of something or someone whose outlines became just visible if she stared hard enough.

  “I want to ask about your suit,” Hwa said. “How you use it. Who can use it. If anyone else has ever asked to use it. Where it can be bought.”

  A muffled voice told her that she was not the first to ask this.

  “I don’t want to buy it myself, understand,” Hwa said. “It’s your suit. You can have it. I just want to know more about how they work.”

  The voice said they worked just fine.

  Hwa let her accent thicken. Let him know she was for real. That she was town, through and through. “I’m not trying to hire you for a job, or anything. I’s not asking you to steal something, or hurt somebody. That’s not why I’s here.”

  The tension in the elevator lessened, fractionally but measurably.

  “All I wants to know is where you were on a certain day.”

  And just like that, it was back. Hwa’s hand strayed to the pocket of her jacket. As quietly as she could, she flipped back the cap on a canister of spray paint.

  “I want to ask—”

  The first blow caught her completely by surprise. It was a solid right cross to her jaw, and it was strong enough to knock her into the other side of the elevator. Only the dropped packet of chips alerted her to where he would be. Hwa lashed out and up with her feet. The first kick landed glancingly on what felt like an inner thigh. It was more luck than anything else. The second went nowhere.

  Not wanting to waste time, she dug out the bottle of spray paint and started hosing the room. The paint came out a ridiculous electric purple. He knocked it out of her hands. It clattered against one wall of the elevator and rolled across the floor, out of her reach.

  She launched herself forward at the moving streak of purple and hit legs. He hammered her shoulders, then her back, then her kidneys. The suit was slippery, silken, tough to grip. No balls to be found. He grabbed her by the hair and threw her up against one wall. Brought her head back. Smashed it into the wall. And again. She saw stars. She curled her fingers around the handrail for balance. Her foot shot out behind her. It connected soundly. She heard the air leave him. He gagged. She threw herself at him, tumbling into the illusion of ugly patterned carpet, and started hitting. Blood from her mouth and forehead dripped onto the suit; she targeted her fists there. He reached for her throat but she didn’t stop, just swung harder, her fist arcing through the air like she was pounding a crooked nail into stubborn wood.

  Slowly, the hood of the suit began to slip away. She grabbed with both hands and yanked. It peeled away from him. He screamed. And screamed. And screamed.

  Beneath the hood, he had no face.

  There were eyes. A slit for a mouth. Something that might have been a nose, once. But he’d been burned. Horrifically. Tufts of hair threaded away from the back of his gleaming purple skull. The skin under his eyes was bubbled and melted. He howled and covered his face with his suited arms, but the illusion wavered. Now she could see more than just the edges of it. This was why he lived this way, she realized. A simple filter hid her true face from most eyes, but this man, whoever he was, couldn’t bear even that attenuated amount of scrutiny.

  “Please don’t kill me,” he whimpered. “You found me. That’s enough.”

  “Didn’t you try to kill me?” Hwa asked.

  “No.” He spoke from behind his hands. His ruined face peeked out from behind glimmering fingers. “It all went so wrong. So wrong.”

  “Why? Because the wrong person wound up hurt?”

  He shook his head. It was a motion of his whole body. His neck, she realized, was so thick with scar tissue that it would no longer move. “They said no one would be there.”

  Hwa frowned. “During the lockdown?”

  “During the shift. They said it was a dead shift. Maintenance day. So fewer people would be there. They just wanted the apparatus destroyed. But they got the schedule wrong.”

  Something very hard and very cold began to form in the pit of Hwa’s stomach. Her voice came out quiet. “What?”

  “They said it would be fine. He said it would be fine. He said I’ll find you something you want, and give it to you. But it all went so wrong.”

  Hwa’s vision swam. “How long have you been like this?”

  “Three years.” He sounded exhausted. “I change my mind. Kill me. Kill me now. I’m so tired. Maybe you know what it’s like. You have some sense of it. I can tell. I can see it on your face. Your real face.”

  Hwa wiped blood from her eyes. Most of it was blood, anyway. She had thought of this moment so many times. What she would do. How she would do it. Fast or slow. Painful or painless. Here was the face on every heavy bag, the spirit inside every training dummy. She had not expected it to be this wounded, already. This much like her own.

  “You killed my brother.”

  He brought his hands away. “I killed all of them. Or I helped. I’m the only one left alive. The rest of us didn’t make it. I got all the money. There was a lot of money. They wanted this city. Badly.”

  She needed to know more. And desperately hoped he wouldn’t tell her.

  “But you know that.” He was wheezing, now. “You’re on the payroll, too. Just like this whole town.”

  11

  Emergent

  When she entered Daniel Síofra’s apartment, the freezer was the first place she went. She had the passcode from one of their running meetings. A Saturday. He was late that day thanks to a group call, and he said she should just take the train and meet him upstairs. How long ago was that? A week? Two weeks? Three? Was it normal, the way they’d fallen into step with each other? No. He’d pushed boundaries from the start. She should have put a stop to it. But it was good, having a friend like him. Someone for whom she could be new, someone who didn’t know her—t
hat poor sick girl with the terrible mother. Someone who didn’t pity her like she knew Eileen and Mistress Séverine and even Kripke did. And now she knew why he’d become her friend. Why he’d followed her so very closely. She thought she might be sick.

  It didn’t matter. Not anymore. She folded the ice up in a towel and took a seat facing the door and waited. At the hospital, Dr. Mantis had said she would need ice. She knew all that already, but the anti-concussion machines were worth the lecture.

  It was very late when Síofra arrived. He came through the door carrying a bottle of chilled vodka. The frost on it retreated from his flesh where his fingers curled around the neck of the bottle. She saw as much when he set it down on the coffee table. He’d bought it quite recently, then. On his way home. Some remote part of her noticed these things and filed them away someplace where they couldn’t hurt her.

  “Hwa,” he said, smiling. He came closer. She had only the fire on, and kept it low. Lights hurt. “Hwa?”

  Then his face changed, and he was on his knees in front of her. “What happened?” His hands came up to her face and she flinched and he pulled them away. He kept his hands in her line of sight. “Who did this? Hwa? Oh, my God. Tell me who did this.”

  To her disgust, a single tear rolled down from her good eye. Síofra’s hands struggled on the arms of the sectional, fingers twisting the fibres of the blanket that shrouded her. He wanted to hold her. She wanted to let him. It would be so easy. She could lie and say there was just another fight, Andrea maybe, or maybe someone at the school, and he would bundle her up in martinis and pity and tell her he’d never let anyone hurt her, not ever again.

  I’ll find something you want, he had said. And then I’ll give it to you.

  “We should go to the clinic, upstairs,” Síofra said, almost more to himself than to her. “Zachariah has women doctors, too. They’re on call. Remote, but on call. Completely private and secure.”

  Jesus Christ. He thought she’d been raped. A sound left her mouth. She wasn’t sure if it was a laugh or a moan or just indignation and grief. She bent double in her seat. The sound poured out between her knees.