by Ren Warom
Leave them all behind.
Beneath.
The Aftermath Always Sucks
Back on her bike, Amiga takes point as they weave back to their shitty temporary base in Ginzo, buried amongst teetering ’scrapers, hidden deep in the maze of narrow back streets. Crowded and violent with noise in the daytime, these streets are eerily silent at this time of evening as darkness drops in a catastrophic rush, the arch of the Milky Way appearing like an exotic street lamp. Ripples of gold follow it, spreading forward and away with the same languid ease as sunlight racing across water.
Amiga looks up as tight flocks of avatars wheel over, describing byzantine patterns over the peaks of the ’scrapers as they spiral around to swoop low at speed and illuminate ’scraper windows like miniature suns, their gold sparkling on dust and cobwebs, the delicate ripple of bamboo behind filthy glass.
A narwhal sweeps past her shoulder, the contact like static, a prickle of electric needles. Avatars are absolutely alive, too much so to ignore. And so completely personal, a startling, breath-stealing intimacy of connection. Leopard Seal, Amiga’s avatar, is a tingling presence woven through her mind so tightly she can look through her eyes, sense what she’s thinking and feeling at all times. Too intense for words. A state of emotional connection she’s not ready for and yet has no choice in.
Surprising then that there are moments in which she forgets this has not always been her reality.
Even more surprising is that her avatar’s not scared of or disgusted by her, not even knowing every atom of what she is, what she’s done—what she’s fighting away from and back to with equal, disconcerting ferocity. Leopard Seal is gentler than her. Softer. Sweeter. Unswervingly moral. Everything she can’t be any more. She’s terrified of hurting her. Warns her not to look in for a while and experiences the gentle, unmistakable sweep of a mind against hers, like the comforting swipe of cheek against jaw.
I was there in the ’scraper, and I’m here now. I’m going nowhere.
Why does that make Amiga want to cry?
* * *
Their digs is one of the Movement’s old bolt holes, stuck catty-corner in a ’scraper carved to way more cramped apartments than it has any right to be. But safe. Secure. Deuce’s work again, hacking into their servers on the faintest of trails. He’s getting scary good with his avi out, enough to make Amiga suspect he fudged his aptitude tests a few times to lower his percents because no way he’s only a top 2%.
Makes her curious as to why anyone would do that, especially someone as resigned as Deuce to the inevitability of a Fail.
She hates that the fall of Fulcrum couldn’t change that particular part of the system, the part designed to punish independent thought. But maybe four weeks isn’t enough to change that. Maybe nothing is. Scary that sometimes people seem to need what they hate, and here, what everyone hates is the Psych Eval. You go to Cad or Tech, train hard for years in your pre-selected skills chosen by aptitude tests, and then, at the end of it all, you take the Psych Eval. Might as well call it the obedience test.
Pass and you are gifted the life of a WAMOS—a well-adjusted member of society—allowed to benefit from your years of training.
Fail and you have two choices: remain in the heart of society, a WAMOS of sorts but at the lowest level of Corp or Tech with no hope for advancement. Or leave. Immediately. No money. No credentials. No hope. Those who leave generally become J-Hacks or criminals and the line is a thin one. Almost negligible.
It’s frightening how easy it is to Fail. How very many who thought they would Pass for sure somehow found themselves with the worst of choices.
Her Deuce knew he was set to be J-Hack all along—the only way Deuce can think is for himself—so why would he feel the need to conceal his level? Weird. She’s always thought she knew all there was to know about him. Makes her itch to ask, but when you’re as tight-lipped about your past as she is with your supposed nears and dears, there’s no license or wiggle room to start quizzing others about portions of theirs they choose to conceal.
Killing engines, they roll their caterbikes into the narrow alley tucked between their ’scraper and the next, behind the bulk of trash cans, and Deuce slings their unconscious prisoner over his shoulder, running lightly up the fire escape as if the fucker weighs nothing. Amiga recalls the graceless thump and drag of her handling of that particular body. Jeez. She needs to work on her fucking biceps and her envy; neither is particularly impressive right now.
The safe house is on the thirteenth floor, unlucky or lucky depending on your historic preference. Inside, Deuce places their prisoner on a bed—he’s starting to stir, groaning low in his throat. The bruise from her knife is angry mottled red on swollen flesh, going gradually black as blood gathers under the skin. Yeah, that’s gotta sting. Unlucky for him, it’ll soon be the least of his worries.
“I’ll need him tied down to a chair in the other room,” Amiga says, trying to make it sound less final than it is. Trying to ignore the looks in their eyes that clench her stomach like a vice.
“Are we going to allow this?” Vivid asks Deuce, as if Amiga’s not even here. Wow, that stings like a bitch, but she gets why it has to be that way, and that’s somehow worse, because she’s not meant to be on the outside any more, she chose to join them. Made her commitment. It’s just not working out quite how any of them planned. “I mean, really?”
“Not sure we have a choice,” he responds, careful. Looks like he’s brewing excuses for her. He shouldn’t have to do that. She hates putting him in that position.
“Well that’s bullshit.”
“Viv…” Deuce starts in a warning tone.
Vivid cuts him off. “Don’t make excuses. That’s more bullshit and you know it. My question stands: are we going to allow Amiga to go all out on that guy? Is that how we do shit now?”
“Fuck,” Deuce rams his hands through his hair. “How do we do shit, Viv? What the hell even is this shit?”
“Teamwork,” Vivid says, and her tone precludes argument. “No matter what’s changed, that’s what stays the same. She doesn’t get to screw that up.”
Enough. Amiga can answer for her damned self. “If you want to do this, Viv, if you want to talk to him, you’re welcome. I’ll hold back.”
Slamming a fist into the door, Vivid all but snarls, “As a matter of fact, I do. You think I can’t do it?”
“I think you can do pretty much anything you want,” Amiga replies, and it’s the truth so it’s easy to admit. “But I know you haven’t done this, or you wouldn’t be so fucking upset. It’s not the same as combat. He’ll be helpless, he is helpless, and you’ll have to hurt him. A lot. Slowly. Carefully. With precise cruelty. Because he’ll know you’re not into it, he’ll sense the lack of commitment and he won’t be scared enough to break unless you shut down and go for broke, which will break you. He’s already scared of me; I won’t have to do much. I was just going to take this, but that’s not good teamwork, is it? So, what I’m doing now is offering to lift this burden from you. You wanna carry it, go ahead. You’re big and ugly enough to choose for yourself.”
“Why is torture necessary? Can we not interrogate without?” Raid says. “We’re not monsters.”
That’s a reasonable idea. Idealistic. Naive. But reasonable. “He’s a soldier. He’d torture you for information. If you ask him, he’ll give you nothing. I suppose we could ask Shock to go in there and strip his mind clean—different method, same outcome.”
Raid hisses, flinching back. “We can’t ask Shock to do that. We can’t do that.”
“Fuck’s sake,” Vivid snaps. “Whatever. Do it. Take it. I don’t have the stomach. I dig combat like it’s my fucking sister, but that’s where my love of violence begins and ends.”
And that’s why Amiga will always consider Viv a friend, even if she turns on her and slices her fucking liver out. There’s fuck all ego under that explosive, take-no-prisoners temper, only a firm set of morals and the kind of mind Amiga envies, unclo
uded by any confusion or denial of what she is.
Amiga places a hand on Vivid’s arm. “You’re crazy, but you’re not nasty.”
All she gets in response is a look full of concern. “And you’re both. Still. Didn’t you leave that shit behind when you punctured your fucking lung putting Twist down?”
“Guess not,” Amiga says with what she hopes is a nonchalant shrug, and that’s about as honest as she can get right now. To Deuce she says, “Let’s do this.”
He shoulders the prisoner again and takes him through to their tiny second room, strewn with unwanted furniture. Picking up a chair, Deuce lowers the man into it and, grabbing some ties out of his back pocket, secures his upper arms to the back and his ankles to the legs. Then he goes to stand with his back to the window, facing her.
“Staying then?”
“Yep.”
“Are you sure you want to see this?” He’s never seen this side of her before. Never seen how she can kill; the pure, aloof callousness of it, the brisk vulgarity, the dismantlement.
“No, but I’m doing it anyway.” He gives her the benefit of a very frank look. “Hiding this is not helpful to either of us.”
She thinks of his response to her violence before, and says, “I think hiding is more helpful than not. I should make you leave.”
“But you won’t.”
“You’ll see me differently after this.”
He sniffs. “I’ll take that chance. Just… nothing slow, okay? Don’t draw it out. I can handle you being violent, even nasty violent, but not cruel. You aren’t cruel.”
Not the answer she wanted. Whatever. It is what it is. He’ll find out. “Okay.”
Gently tapping his cheeks, Amiga encourages their prisoner to come around. Kneels down to smile upwards into his dazed eyes as they finally crank open, so he can’t avoid seeing her. The parallels with her rescue of Shock from Pill’s attentive torture a few weeks ago are not lost to her, they burn and itch like a scar improperly healed. The prisoner jerks backward, scraping the chair a foot across the floor. Looks wildly around the room, locking on to Deuce like a lifeline. Deuce winces, but he doesn’t look away. Shit. Whatever happens in the next however long is probably going to determine whether she leaves this room single or not.
Sighing, Amiga grabs the prisoner’s chin and forces him to look at her. He’s sweating buckets and she has to dig her fingers in to maintain a grip.
“I’m going to try asking nicely first, because I’m trying to be a better person,” she says, not bothering to ask his name; they won’t be friends. “Who’s your boss?”
He spits on the floor, right by her foot.
Amiga pulls out her knife. The cheeks of the Cartel soldier tighten a touch, but he straightens. Stares. He won’t shame himself by making this easy. Sucking in a breath she feels to the ends of her nerves, Amiga does what she does best and rams the tip of her blade under his kneecap, closing her ears to his screams and ignoring Deuce as he steps away from the window and shouts, near frantic. Appalled.
“Amiga! What the fuck?”
“Deuce,” she says, just loud enough to be heard over the noise their prisoner is making. “Back off.”
“But…”
She rounds on him furiously, grimacing as it pulls at her scar a tad too hard. “You wanted me to be quick. This will be quick. If you can’t handle it, the door is right there.”
Hurt blooms in those black eyes of his. Then hardness. “Fine. Carry on.”
Amiga turns her attention back to the prisoner. With a few razor-edged gulps of air he manages to stop screaming, the whites of his eyes huge and bloodshot, his cheeks trembling with the effort of containing what must be horrific pain. She’s still crouched between his knees, one hand on the handle of the knife, her palm cupped around the end. A third of the blade is buried, kneecap and gristle grating over either side of tensile steel, slick with blood.
They both feel that sensation for a moment, her on the outside, him on the inside. Then she speaks. Clearly. Calmly. In her most reasonable voice, even though nothing inside of her is reasonable any more. It’s all white noise and howling, the certainty that the only certainty in her life, stood there by the window, has shifted from beneath her and the ground is roaring under her heels, preparing to give way.
“I asked nicely,” she says. “Now I’m fucking insisting. You tell me why there are so many of you around up in our fucking faces, or I will rip your goddamn kneecap off.”
He sniffs loudly, sucking snot back into his nose. Makes that awful hawking noise, and spits again. Right on her face.
Wiping the dripping mess away with her sleeve, Amiga shoves the blade in to the hilt, yanks it sideways and rips it up. He tries not to scream, his pupils blown to pits, his skin bleached grey, but it rips from him like the bloodied scale of his kneecap, flung away to rest, sawn and gushing blood on the opposite side of his knee, shaking as his body shakes. She watches it. Blinks rapidly. Will not cry. Will not cry. Moves to the other knee.
“Amiga.”
Deuce. Pleading. Almost a moan rather than her name. He can’t do this. He’s going to do this. It will wreck them. She’s never been given anything so freely as Deuce. She’s never thrown anything so precious away with such reckless abandon. She can’t do it again.
She rams the blade under the intact kneecap, impassive as the next wave of screaming hits her guts like an overdose of bad grease and vinegar. She needs this and hates this. What kind of fucking monster is she anyway?
It takes more than the second kneecap. Takes more than she imagined it would, because some people close off when faced with this much pain, and this guy happens to be one of them. At some point she hears the door close softly behind Deuce. Her eyes close with it. Her heart tries the same, but she stops it in its tracks. No, damn you, you will feel.
The prisoner begins to speak, telling her everything he knows, which isn’t much—only one thing takes her by surprise. A name that rings a queasy little bell: Lucian duPont.
“Lucian?” She sits back on her heels. “There’s a turn up.”
Lucian duPont was one of Twist’s acquisitions— useful connections he treated as friends. Lucian came in a trio—weirdest interdependent relationship she’s ever witnessed. He and his two associates gave her the significant creeps. No easy task, but they were wrong. That’s why Twist cultivated them. If that trio is in charge of the Cartel, it’s no wonder the Hornets are in trouble.
She’s putting the prisoner out of his misery when the first explosion sounds below. Deuce bursts into the room.
“I guess you hear we have company. We have to go. Did he talk?”
“He talked.”
“Then let’s move.”
“We can only go out the way we came in. Those fuckers know it too.”
He throws her a gun she didn’t even notice he was holding. “So we fight our way out. As a team.”
Olive branch. Who knew they came gun-shaped? She offers a tentative smile. He smiles back, and it’s not changed, not yet, but his eyes slide uneasily around the chair, the broken puppet of man slumped upon it. Vivid and Raid can’t look at Amiga yet at all. That’s cool. It’s fine. As long as they’re all of one mind, and they are, moving fast to get through the corridors, guns at the ready, braced for the moment they run headlong into the twenty-strong crew of heavily armed Grey Cartel.
What the fuck? Again? Shock’s in so much trouble when she gets back to Shandong.
This is where the Hornets excel though, poised around the corner, two each side; her and Deuce to the right, Raid and Vivid to the left, taking turns to aim small bursts of bullets. Clinical shots. They hit almost as many as she does, and just as precise. Bullets for real guns are at more of a premium than ever, but even though the Hornets are making their own, they run out faster.
They hunker in, patient. There are eleven Cartel left, with orders to what? Kill? Maim? Torture? Probably all of the above. They have to make a move soon. When they do, it’s over in seconds. Gro
ups of four rush them, guns high to fire at will. They find the Hornets and Amiga ready, coming in under their barrels with blades drawn. One on one, they take them down, use them to charge the rest, dispatching them with vicious ease.
With the way clear, Amiga laughs at Vivid. Too much relief. Both of them covered, impossibly sticky and stinking. Vivid laughs back, no more of that uneasy evasion. Raid and Deuce are there too, back in her orbit like they never left. Breathless, they exit the building and race around to the alley to jump on their bikes and cane it for Shandong.
Zero Dark Thirty
Hunkered down on the chair like a gargoyle, her thighs aching, Maggie wades through a pile of invoices. Around her, the room resonates with a constant burr of sound, the factories around them at work. The sound never stops. Never sleeps. Becomes an integral part of consciousness, a wave thought rides in and out on, almost soothing.
On the edge of this industrial Chinese District, in one of the warehouses attached to a factory that no longer contributes to that hum, they’ve built a makeshift hospital. An oasis of sorts from trouble, a place to try and find a way to heal the Zeros of the Gung. They’ve had no luck. Zeros tend not to be lucky. Commercial fodder for Corps, Zeros DL virads into their drives to release in Slip, spreading the urge to buy useless tat no one needs. Over time the virad jingles they seed in Slip infect their speech until silence becomes impossible.
This sickness seems to be virads given new powers of infection. Jingles writing themselves under the skin in veins. Dark tangles of useless words bringing fever, organ malfunction, and silence so profound it would be unnatural even in non-Zeros. Almost all the Patient Zeros they know of in the Gung are sick now, probably the ones on the hubs too, and Mollie, her Mollie—the one who created the virads in the first place—she’s sick too.