Virology

by Ren Warom

  Fuck sake, Haunt, chime me already.

  He ignores her irritation. It won’t last. DuPont and his merry pranksters have signal diffused between the Tokyo and Paris Hubs, no telling which—we’d have to hit and hack on the go to ferret them out. And the Cartel just took over Olbax and Veritas. By took over I mean fucking swallowed. The stock markets have gone batshit. Not to mention we have weird shit going down at Paraderm, a change of ownership of all things. Looks shady as fuck.

  Shit. We need to make plans.

  This is obvious.

  Her snippy reply to his condescension is swallowed by the insistent chime of an all-too-familiar presence in her drive, echoing into his through this too-goddamn open connection Emblem forces him to endure: Maggie. Considering she never calls, he’s not surprised to feel the wave of concern riding Amiga’s drive. He shouldn’t listen in, but hell, this is Maggie, which means it’s Mollie. He needs to know.

  What’s wrong? Amiga snaps. Is Mollie okay? Is EVaC?

  You need to get your arse to me, right the fuck now. I’m sending you an addy. No time for questions, just hustle. Maggie’s harsh in Amiga’s drive, abrasive, a combo of huge irritation and the tilting slew of sick fear. What the fuck? Despite having none of Shock’s Emblem-like awareness, Amiga catches it too and panics. Panic in Amiga feels off. He doesn’t like it.

  Maggie, are you…?

  No questions, Amiga. Just get here.

  She shoves out of Amiga’s head, slamming an addy into her drive as she goes.

  There’s a brief, sizzling silence. You catch that? No censure, only disbelief at what just happened. When is he ever going to manage to surprise Amiga?

  Yeah. You need to go.

  Amiga groans. You see what she’s asking here? Does she think I’m a fucking Haunt now?

  Quit bitching. You’re an ex-Cleaner, for fuck’s sake. Wear that skin Deuce conjured up for us if you’re feeling nervous.

  Fuck you.

  And she’s out, leaving his head rung like a bell and too heavy to carry.

  * * *

  Maggie’s waiting outside the apartment block addy she pinged, shivering slightly in a vicious breeze. Amiga strides toward her, not really feeling the cold, or anything much at all. Her mind is too busy to acknowledge anything so paltry as the weather, filled with a crap tonne of piss and vinegar fully waiting on the moment it gets to pour over Maggie like burning pitch from a castle gate. Maggie starts when Amiga reaches her and touches her arm.

  “Holy fuck! I didn’t recognize you!”

  “I’m wearing a skin. Obviously I’m a massive target right now.”

  Amiga tries not to come on too strong with the pissiness, but it’s been brewing the whole way here, crammed cheek to sweating cheek with a bazillion other commuters on the fucking mono of all things because attached to the addy was this goddamn imperative note to come on public transport. Caterbike apparently surplus to requirements. As if Maggie was going to be driving the fucking thing. Yeah right. Rude.

  The Gung being as it is right now, she’s expected to die the entire way here. Talk about unnecessary stresses.

  “I’m so sorry you had to come here like this,” Maggie says then in a rush, like dark water spewing from a pipe, and it’s all wrong. Too far from the Maggie she knows, that delightful cocktail of snip and wit and sparks. This Maggie is all pale skin, wavering edges and dark undertones dangerously close to grief. So close that Amiga pulls the plug on her piss and vinegar there and then, her danger-dar flashing up and going straight from nought to oh-my-fucking-shit-has-my-friend-died-or-what?

  “Is it EVaC? Tell me.”

  A glimmer of something visceral, sharp as pain, flashes across Maggie’s green eyes. “Not quite and not here. Come on.”

  Maggie takes Amiga’s arm and pulls her across and up the street. Scrawny starlings hop ahead of them, haranguing well-pecked pigeons, shabby as tramps as they make their way to the shoots of the nearest mono, the glass panel doors plastered over with various flyers and posters blaring a mix of uncertain patriotism and livid fury at the system people are seeing now all too clear.

  The Gung is so restless it’s practically pinging. Some day real soon, things are going to get hella ugly here, and the people set to suffer most are the ones who’ve already suffered enough. Isn’t that always the way it goes? She wishes so hard that it wouldn’t, but neither would she dare tell them not to fight. Truthfully she wants them to fight to their last breath so that some of them can breathe freely. Otherwise, why breathe at all?

  The shoot to the mono platform turns out to be broken, the third broken shoot she’s seen today— vandalized, surprise, sur-fucking-prise—so they take the exposed staircase to catch the north line, disembarking in one of the dense, industrialized areas at the edges of the Chinese district. Lots of vast warehouses here, attached to giant, noisy factories; great, dark blotches against a striated skyline of shabby, colourful ’scrapers and dull umber clouds, roiling like gas fumes against turbulent sky. The lack of effluent from these huge, grey monument-like houses of industry is the single inoffensive thing about them.

  “Here.”

  They’re in a street lined with warehouses, at the backs of the factories. Wide enough for large transporters and unremittingly grimy, these streets stink of oil and grease, of mildew, and the musky scent of the rats who use the buildings as meeting houses. Maggie unlocks a small door, camouflaged within grime-spattered breeze blocks by a patina of grey filth. Leads Amiga into a dark corridor and up several sets of damp concrete stairs before pushing through into a tower room. Unlit. Mollie’s tubes are here though, their delicate neon yellow casting a brief, warm light against the walls, shifting and pulsing.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” says Maggie, and makes to leave.

  Amiga grabs her arm. “What’s going on?”

  “Mollie wants to see you in private. We’ll talk after.”

  Frowning, Amiga tightens her grip. “Maggie?”

  That bright-green gaze snatches hers. Sticks like glue. Throws unspoken words like darts to land smack bang in the quivering bullseye of Amiga’s reluctantly soft heart. Oh. This is bad.

  Stunned, she barely hears the door click shut and then Mollie glides down. Elegant. Glowing. When Amiga first saw her she thought she was an angel, she still is, every last bit of her divine. Except… Amiga’s mouth drops open. Impossible. Not this. Anything but this. Anything but translucent flesh, the press of humming veins formed to symbols around her tattoos, too close to words to be anything else. How the fuck did Agen-Z, Mother Zero get sick?

  Amiga shakes her head. No. Nope. Not happening.

  “What?” she manages to say. “The fuck?”

  Mother Zero reaches out a pale, delicate hand—speaks in IM. And the words come out unmarred by virad junk, which puts a freaking full stop on anything but Amiga’s desire to know what the fuck is up because that shit takes Herculean effort, meaning this is important.

  Things are out of control.

  No shit, pings Amiga softly, more to herself than Mollie. “I can see that,” she says aloud. “Have to say I don’t like what I see.”

  Look closer.

  “Huh?” Are they on the same page or what?

  The answer is on my skin.

  Right. Different pages. Amiga scours Mollie’s skin, even though looking makes her want to howl, to hit stuff, to run away and cry. Fails to understand anything. “Huh?” Eloquent much. One thing’s clear in all this mess: there’s subtext going on here. Mountains of subtext Amiga is too fucking stupid or too goddamn stun-gunned to fillet out. “Explain.”

  But the pained look in Mollie’s buttercup eyes makes her realize that the oldest Zero in the biz is doing all she can to cork the rise of the jingles, and she’d better let Mollie be Mollie and figure out the rest herself. Jeez. Why her life has to be like a fucking K-drama she’ll never know.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Relief floods buttercup yellow like sunlight. Shareen. Risi. Find
Zen. Kill.

  The emphasis on the final word is like a million full stops stacked to a mountain. Falls like lead into Amiga’s drive and lingers, making waves. She’s never known Mollie to be vicious.

  And that’s… it. Mollie diminishes, her wires pulling her back up into the roof, leaving only her light reflecting in Amiga’s eyes like sun spots. She leaves the room feeling sandblasted. Maggie’s outside waiting, rested up against the wall. The look on her face is pure grief, sends Amiga’s belly into acid overdrive.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Maggie takes Amiga’s shoulder in a fierce grip. “I know.”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Maggie gives Amiga this look. Uh oh. “So much more than you know. Come with me.”

  Retracing their steps to the entrance, Maggie takes her through a bigger door into the warehouse proper—an old dye factory, abandoned probably decades ago. Under low lighting, ranks of vats gleam, scrubbed back to bright silver, their tops shuttered with what look like brand new plastic roller blinds. Maggie winds through them, unerring, to one in particular. She rolls back the shutter and tilts her head—an invitation, a challenge.

  Under neon-yellow liquid like the stuff in Mollie’s tubes, is EVaC. Her EVaC. One of the very first Hornets she clicked with after Deuce. Somehow, without ever exchanging more than two or three words at a time, they became fast friends. She’d go over to the hut he shared with Deuce and KJ, and EVaC would smile, hand her popcorn and a gaming glove.

  Fuck but she hates gaming. She’d only play that shit with him. She misses him. Misses kicking his arse at shooting games. His elbow jabbing her side, the popcorn he always threw. Such a bad fucking loser. She’d find popcorn in her hair out on jobs for Twist and get fits of giggles. So professional. But she didn’t have to be professional with him, and by understanding that, she’d begun to understand that none of the Hornets expected that side of her either. She could be herself with them, if she could ever find that again.

  Memories of then collide with the body in the tank and it’s all Amiga can do to stop from puking. From screaming at the sheer injustice of this shit.

  Floating gently, he’s still human in shape, and naked… she thinks. Is that skin? What is it? It’s livid, deformed. Blood floods the surface and leaches away: SOS patterns of a body in crisis. Giant veins tangle the surface in complex patterns, twisting around organs risen through thinned flesh and pulsing like club lights to form a single word over and over: Zen.

  So that’s what Amiga should’ve seen on Mollie’s skin? Now she thinks back, it was there, written in the ugly coil of veins. Jeez.

  “When did it get this bad?” she whispers.

  Maggie places a hand between her shoulder blades and rubs. “Things took a dive after Fulcrum fell,” she says. Pragmatic. Final. “Volk’s been helping me. We’ve tried everything we can think of but… you saw Mollie. She doesn’t Slip, Amiga. She can’t. She’s saturated with virads, reached tilt fucking decades ago. If she needs to do anything requiring Slip she uses J-Net. You know why.”

  Amiga nods. J-Net is the J-Hack version of Slip, a mad, virtual city full of noise and lights, a place for play and plotting. “No consumerism. No bullshit. No virads,” she says.

  “Exactly. So here’s the huge fucking insurmountable problem; she’s sick because the ones already inside of her changed.” Maggie’s hands plough into her hair. Tug hard. Her desperation is awful to witness, and there’s something deeper to it, something eating at her. Amiga wants to ask, but maybe it’s private grief. Mollie is Maggie’s after all.

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Exactly.” The hollowness in Maggie’s voice breaks Amiga’s stupid fucking heart. “It’s doing things it shouldn’t be able to and we know why.”

  “Zen.”

  Maggie nods. “First it was just the sickness getting so much worse. Then Mollie got sick. And then,” she swallows, something else in it. What’s the subtext? Amiga loathes not knowing, but she can’t ask a question Maggie won’t answer. “They’ve been dreaming, saying her name in their dreams, and now her fucking name has found its way onto their skin. Did Mollie mention Zen?”

  “Yeah. She did.”

  Maggie’s hand grips her shoulder again, hard enough to pinch. “What does she want you to do?”

  “Find Zen. Kill. Who’s Shareen?”

  An almost hysterical laugh escapes Maggie. “She’s lucid?”

  “As much as I’ve ever seen her.”

  “And she mentioned Shareen?”

  “Yeah. Could Shareen help me find Zen?”

  One of Maggie’s shoulders kicks up, more of a spasm than a shrug. “Don’t do that, Amiga. Please. It’s not safe. Not even if she’s lucid.”

  Amiga chooses to ignore that, because it’s not up to Maggie to decide what Amiga does. “Mollie said Risi. Do you have any idea where Shareen might be in Risi? I’ll go anyway and look, so you may as well narrow me down.”

  Maggie sighs, the defeat in it chips away at Amiga’s resolution, but she holds on tight. This is not Maggie’s choice. “She has a drag act in one of the clubs. Just… think really hard about not going. Okay? Mollie is really sick and anything she’s saying right now might not be her, no matter how lucid. Understand? I only called for you today because she wouldn’t sleep until I brought you here. She needs to sleep.”

  Amiga steps back from the tank, unable to look at EVaC any more. This is all too raw. It’s scraping her insides to smithereens. Maggie’s too. The strain of it is all over her. “You don’t think Mollie’s going to live, do you? You don’t think any of them are. Not even if I can do as she asks.”

  Maggie doesn’t answer. Frankly, Amiga didn’t expect her to, but this was a question she couldn’t hold in. It might have eaten her alive. Rolling the shutter back over EVaC, Maggie takes Amiga to the front door and lets her out into the bitter chill of enthusiastic wind. Before she closes it, she does the unexpected and answers, her voice a complex cocktail of tossed gauntlet and surrender.

  “I don’t want to think it,” she says, and there’s subtext again. Whole ranges of hidden icebergs. “But it’s like seeing Zen’s name written in Mollie’s flesh. I want to stop seeing it, but I can’t get it out of my stupid fucking head.”

  A Killer Can Look Upon A Queen

  Behind the brash borderland of Plaza, Risi is the bright sparkles after the first explosion of a firework. Risi cruises along with an easy charm, a loose charisma, all soft jazz, disco classics and porn bass interspersed with bright anthems bursting from the doorways of clubs manned by bouncers in bow ties and blazers, thresholds exploding at the seams with men and women dressed to fucking party. Or to kill.

  Amiga is not happy. Being in a place this packed and somehow public when the Cartel are all but breathing down their necks qualifies as a whole other league of bullshit, even wearing a skin. Cautious, she makes her way through tangled streets bathed in flashing shocks of colour to a club called Riko’s. It’s not as full as she remembers, or as loud, but there are some of the usual crowd, they point her in the direction of where she might find the drag queens these days.

  Risi is fluid. Ever-changing. Clubs come and go and the community they service follows cheerfully en masse, a bright gaggle, undeterred, proudly outspoken. Their current home is in a corner of Risi surrounded by hookah restaurants and steaming sauna joints, the curlicue of club names set between like jewels above secured doors. The air vibrates with heat, steam rolls out from the sauna joints and along the street, parting against her feet like dry ice.

  Need help?

  Amiga grins at the familiar press of whiskers and warmth against her head. Could do. Gotta hunt all these joints for a drag queen called Shareen.

  In a flurry like sparks from a faulty light, Leopard Seal appears beside her, cavorting. I can do that. You take this street, I’ll take the next.

  Deal. Be careful.

  Likewise.

  Leopard Seal flits off, dividing steam like a boat throu
gh mist, her tail flicking gusts to disperse into golden-hued air. Amiga strolls to the first shuttered door and grim-faced bouncer. Puts on her most dangerously pleasant face.

  “I’m looking for Shareen.”

  He jerks his chin. “She ain’t here. Sings at Club T, up near Koko Split. Can’t miss it. Koko’s lit like the fourth of July on NYC Hub.”

  Nodding thanks, Amiga hits up Leopard Seal with the particulars. She can look faster, not being locked to either IRL or feet for that matter. Hunting sorted, Amiga finally listens to the quiet rumble of her belly and buys a cone of shrimp fries to scoff, wandering along idly and scanning the crowds whilst hoofing them down. She takes in every little detail, Cleaner-honed senses stretched to max and fizzing.

  Funny how so much has changed in the Gung and yet it’s almost invisible. More feel than fact, more rising threat than actuality. When she’s out on the streets it’s evident in the constant bristle of hairs on the back of her neck, not only the product of knowing she’s a target but her bat senses screaming of incipient violence. Nothing this uneasy remains quiescent for long. And the rage is everywhere, in every face, often hiding under bewilderment and fear, but ever present and waiting on the lit match to implode it to flames.

  Found it. The bright one. He wasn’t kidding; they’re lit up like an inner-city ’scraper.

  Oh man. Any joy on Club T?

  Looking. Would be easier with two pairs of eyes. Leopard Seal throws out a autoGPS so Amiga can follow without ever really looking, concentrating on getting the rest of these hella fucking tasty fries into her mouth. Plan.

  On my way.

  They find Club T buried in a back street to the right of Koko. It’s like a karaoke bar: small, intimate, crammed. A colourful blast of music and laughter and people acting outrageously and loving it, loving her and her avi here too, all hollering and waving, some pointing to their own, playing together like puppies around the mirror balls on the ceiling. The atmos here is so friendly it strikes her as surreal.