Escapology

by Ren Warom

  Harsh much.

  She rolls her eyes. Neat trick. Asshole.

  Isn’t it just? he replies judiciously. Adds with extra snark on the side, You’re fucking late be tee double-ya, and this is our only chance, so you’ll permit me a little grievance.

  Get off my case. You know I have other business to attend.

  You went on a job first? Did you deliver yet?

  Nope.

  It’s still with you? A great wave of disbelief roars down the feed, rattling her skull.

  She hisses, cat-like.

  Cut that out, Deuce, or I will carve you up. I had to have reason to get into the vault today.

  That’s plain nasty.

  No, it’s my job, asswad! Pissed beyond measure, she slams off the frequency.

  It’s not his fault he irritates her so much, he never used to until she dumped him. Work that one out. She can’t. Taking a deep breath she opens her bag. Next to a black cloth sack she avoids with a fastidious wrinkle of her nose, is a portable bolt-thrower. Deuce’s design. A pretty little lightweight contraption one fuck-load tougher than it looks. Over on the other ’rise, Deuce is packing its twin. The wires on these babies have semi-robotic ovoid weights at the end rather than points, equipped with weapon-system immobilizers. They’re aiming to catch a drone, not destroy it.

  Catch a drone.

  Therein lies her whole ish with this shit. Deuce didn’t furnish her with all the facts, big surprise. Turns out they’re not the only J-Hack collective catching a drone. This thing she’s going to thieve from her boss will be going out on five drones in total to hell alone knows where. One drone would be bad enough, but five? Stupid.

  Drones are a collective, controlled by the Hive Queens. The collective will notice these ones missing; it’s just a matter of time. They won’t find them, but that doesn’t mean they can’t triangulate final positions and use abstracted data to map the probabilities behind the loss. This could, eventually, lead them back to the Hornets. It’s an outside chance, but it exists, and the Hornets are too cool about the whole thing. Why? Because the contract is for Da Fellows.

  Amiga doesn’t dig it. Her danger-dar is on red alert and her continued involvement is down to one single thing: if she doesn’t do this they will. And letting them wander happily to their deaths is not an option. But their naive trust in this Fellows type pisses her off. Especially Deuce’s. He’s got smarts to spare, yet he’s wasting none of them on analysing what the hell might be going on here. It galls her no end.

  She’s halfway through assembling the bolt-thrower when Twist pops into her IM. She jumps for reals, almost putting the bolt through her own goddamn leg.

  Amiga. You need to explain why you aren’t here, reporting in.

  Mouthing a litany of the foulest words she can conjure, she scoots in further to try to hide her signal with the wall—which is so beyond futile she plans to give herself a slap for it later—and replies.

  I had some quick business to attend first.

  Unpleasant silence.

  He speaks, and the displeasure in his flat Scots brogue makes her wince. See that when this business is done, you get your arse over to me double time. I want Nero where I can see his weasel face, and I don’t want to wait any longer. Understood?

  Crystal.

  He cuts her off as cold as she cut Deuce and she bangs her head against the wall a couple of times.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck.”

  The whir of the drone, almost zen-like, cuts into her thoughts and she’s up, completed bolt thrower poised on her shoulder. She sees it down at the end of Zhõngshãnlù Block moving fast, a speck of glitter in the pale glow of ’rise spotlights and dimly lit windows.

  A nauseating mix of excitement and fear hits her solar plexus. Zhõngshãnlù is on the edge of China-town, where it bleeds seamlessly into Korea-town, a little area known as Cho-ree, a fair trek away from Sakkura and Jong-phu. If this doesn’t go by the numbers, their numbers are basically up right here and now. If Amiga was religious she’d have gone and burnt a whole stack of incense over this and murmured a prayer or three. Something Michiko taught her perhaps.

  High above on the mono line, the .788 zips past, right on time. Behind it should be two other Hornets: KJ and Vivid. They’ve got the unenviable task of getting the drone back to Sakkura along the mono without being seen. They’re bringing a scrambler to block the collective, but if they don’t stick to schedule they’ll get totalled by the .783, the next mono due, or clocked by drones on patrol. The amount that could go wrong makes Amiga’s head hurt. She opens her frequency.

  KJ, Vee?

  Hey babe. Vivid. Amiga can just about see her, a speck on the line. KJ the lanky speck next to her.

  Ready?

  As we’ll ever be.

  Deuce?

  Ready for his new parlour trick now and in no mood for it, she blocks the fury wave, but he still yells loud enough to deafen.

  What in hell did you cut me off for? Again!

  No time for argument. You ready?

  Yeah, Yeah, I’m ready.

  Amiga checks the time.

  Thirty seconds. No one moves until the signal. We’ve got a three-second window when it’s in our sights.

  I said I’m ready.

  Ignoring his snark, Amiga focuses on the space between the dull gleam of the ovoid bolt and the place the drone will be when she pulls the trigger. The drone whirs along almost silently, until it’s close enough that she can see it. Drones are quite beautiful, like Slip avis. She lines up her shot, breathes out, and fires. In the corner of her eye she sees Deuce’s line zip out at the exact same moment.

  Above them, another line drops at speed from the sky. On the end is a tiny, hellaciously powerful magnet, with the scrambler attached. As the lines strike, spinning the bolts around to hold the drone in position for that valuable window, the magnet hits. She raises a fist to pump it, then realizes something’s wrong. The drone, immobilized, should have begun to rise as Vivid and KJ’s line reels in. Instead, it’s still falling, the lines whirring away along with it.

  Dismay fills Amiga’s frequency.

  What’s the deal, Deuce?

  Old drone specs are hard to come by, I had to extrapolate weight from rough comparison calcs. Looks like I was off. He sounds furious. Deuce hates making mistakes.

  What do we do?

  The magnet needs ramping up before the lines run out and tear it apart.

  You got a remote on that thing?

  Hell no. Remotes give off signals. We’re noisy enough.

  She takes a second to analyse the situation. Cut and run, or try to salvage this?

  “No such thing as quitting,” she mutters, silently cursing the day and her own stupidity.

  Hold it steady, she says to Deuce, already regretting her decision.

  What?

  Hold. It. Steady. I’m going to reel in my line and jump over.

  Are you insane?

  Amiga chokes out a laugh.

  Well obviously. Just hold it.

  Securing her thrower, she sets the line to reverse at double speed and stop halfway. As Deuce’s line goes taut, she backtracks across the roof and sprints, striking off the edge as hard as she can to launch herself at the line. No gloves, no safety net, no fucking brains. Amiga decides that if she lives she’s going to give herself hell.

  Her stomach cramps as the world drops away. Cold air whips her hair into her face where it clings like stringy black spider webs, stinging her eyes and catching at her lips, and nausea chases terror from her stomach. The line looms in her face. She grabs it with both hands, holding in the scream as her palms slice open. Slides down the wire in an out-of-control descent that threatens to eject her intestines out through her nostrils.

  The drone comes up fast beneath her, a giant, angry robotic beast, thrashing on the rapidly unspooling line. Amiga clamps her boots on the wire to slow herself and comes to an unsteady halt about a foot above its writhing back. Still hundreds of feet a
way as yet, the ground rushes toward her as the drone’s weight drags the line down. She’s got to move fast. There’s only so much spare line in Vivid and KJ’s rig and their throwers.

  The air is freezing, dulling the pain in her hands, numbing her frazzled nerves. The drone’s struggling hard, trying to get loose of the bolts and the lines, and there’s the magnet, dead centre on the thorax, perfect for the distribution of force. How the hell does Vivid do that shit? Eyes like a goddamn hawk.

  “Nice shot, Vee,” she murmurs, whilst IMing Deuce. What do I do?

  Link to it with your flash. Here’s the code. Ramp it up to three times the strength, just to be on the safe side.

  Got it, she says, breathing quiet as she can to still the thump of her heart. If she panics, it’s over. The connection is a tiny jolt, a burr in the brain, and then she’s communicating with the magnet. She doesn’t know how Tech heads like Deuce can do it all the time: talking to machines with their odd, alien not-consciousnesses. It’s like sticking your brain in a bucket of cement. She feels when it works though, and the magnet takes firmer hold. The sudden stop sends a bolt of pure white agony through her hands.

  “Mother goddamn…!” She breathes out slow, trying to find her centre, her cool.

  Okay, Vee. Reel it in. Quick. You’re six minutes to the next mono and almost totally off sched.

  Fully compos of that, shug. On it.

  The drone begins to reel up fast, forcing her to hang on tight. Deuce yells victory through the frequency. His bolt activates, untangling its line from the drone and shooting back to his thrower at a low-octave whine. She needs to do the same, or her line will snap tight and rip a chunk of the drone out. Reaching down to grasp the bolt, she untangles the line and winds it securely around her torso. Holding on for grim death, she jumps, bracing in anticipation of face-planting into concrete and dreading the climb to the roof with her palms sliced and gushing blood. Fun.

  By the time she’s pulling her battered body back over the edge and onto the ’rise, KJ and Vivid have reported in from the Hornet’s nest. Whole business done and dusted exactly to schedule even with their two-minute delay, and the drone collective none the wiser. Funny how Amiga doesn’t give a shit.

  Deuce reaches over and helps her up by the wrists.

  “You’re an idiot,” he says. “A brilliant, amazing fucking idiot.” He doesn’t let go of her wrists either as she sets feet to roof, sliding his hands up to turn hers over and examine her palms and oh this is way too familiar and way too much. Why does it keep happening? She needs to stop giving him reasons to touch her.

  “Tell me about it another time,” she says, snatching her hands out of his and grabbing some close-fitting gloves from her bag. They’re her work gloves and have all manner of interesting things woven on the inside. Should stem the bleeding and keep them secure long enough for Ravi, the Hornet’s sawbones, to fix them up. “I’m late to Twist. Deal with my thrower will you?”

  Deuce’s smile falls apart.

  “Sure thing. You’ll be okay?”

  She nods. “Don’t worry about me. Just be ready to haul arse by the time I get back. I want that drone gone from Jong-phu. This shit is making me hella twitchy.”

  “Count on it.”

  She grabs her things and runs off to the staircase door, throwing over her shoulder, “I am.”

  * * *

  Twist lives in Sendai, in Denenchofu Plaza; five two-mile high ’scrapers grouped around an enormous glass-enclosed courtyard. Ex-clu-sive. Amiga strides in, ducking as Waxwings and Flycatchers whir over her head, the metal in their wings making tiny musical clicks. They’re supposed to be inside but some get trapped out here in the foyer like real birds, butting mindlessly against the glass.

  In the courtyard proper the roar of a plunging waterfall assaults her ears. The massive centre of Denenchofu is a full-size real-life reproduction of “Oban Yoko-E” by Hiroshige. Wind-warped trees hang perilously from sheer multi-coloured rock cliffs. Grasses and woodland sway in manufactured breezes, and the cries of golden eagles echo over the bellow of the falls. The only false note in the reproduction, the falls were added to freshen the air and stir the almost lake-sized koi and catfish pond on the other side.

  Amiga takes the tunnel carved through the centre of the mountain. Her footsteps tap in the air, a tinny beat beneath the holler of water and the scream of eagles, and she exits into the Temple Gardens beneath a canopy of weeping willows. At this late hour, the silver sides of the Plaza’s towers scintillate in the blue glow of biome trees, and she heads for the top of the courtyard, for Central Gardens.

  The entrance is chipped to keep out undesirables, but she’s a Cleaner and therefore cleared, so as she approaches Amiga lifts her right hand, feeling the tingle as it’s scanned. Tries not to smile as the glass doors peel apart, welcoming her into luxury. Never show your pleasure, or it will be crushed.

  Central Gardens is designed to mimic an old mountain village. Perfectly elegant wooden houses, painted in delicate shell or cream shades, sit along steep, old stone lanes, their shutters closed to prying eyes. The soft yellow glow of lanterns replaces the brighter blue of biome trees, but trees are everywhere, scenting the air with a soft mixture of jasmine and cherry blossom that never seems to fade. Money it seems can buy anything, including perpetual summer.

  There’s a discreet selection of shoots for the physically challenged but Amiga—ignoring her bone-deep tired and multifarious nerve-pain noise—chooses to walk as usual, enjoying the fresh air, the gentle swish of heavily laden branches in the artificial breeze and the murmuring of waterfalls in private ponds––storing the quiet as a counterweight to the stress of dealing with Twist. If she doesn’t look up or out to the sheer glass walls, she can imagine the world was never broken here, and re-invent her place in it. Pretend she has another kind of life; neither the one she was born with nor the one that allows her to pass into this shrine to riches.

  For Amiga, family has always been part of the problem. Growing up in poverty, in that matriarchal tornado of an indifferent mother and bitter aunts and slamming against the immovable walls of her father’s disappointment, she learnt to disappear. When Michiko died it was the only way she could cope.

  Unsurprising then that she ended up working for Twist, drawn to the sort of family she wants to run away from. She can’t explain the Hornets by the same theory. They’re an anomaly. Decent kids, with good hearts and good intentions; she can’t understand how she deserves them. They’re like a precipice she’s destined to lose her grip on.

  Twist’s home is on the fifth level from the top. She waves her hand at the gate. It cranks open and Geo, the Muscle, a great big German with a square head like the butt-end of an anvil, emerges flanked on either side by the Guns, Twist’s personal guards. Slender girls with flat amber eyes and neat black ponytails, they’re Puerto Rican, deaf mute, communicating when the occasion calls for it in rapid, graceful hand movements. Geo understands them but can’t make the signs—his hands are too damn big and clumsy—so they read his lips just like they read hers.

  “Here to see Twist.”

  Geo sniffs. “’Course you are. He sent an escort.” He gestures at the Guns, who nod.

  Amiga nods back, her stomach loosing from its moorings, dropping into the bowl of her pelvis. Still, she hangs on to her cool.

  “For me? Thoughtful, but unnecessary.”

  A shit-eating grin devours Geo’s outcrop of a chin.

  “Just for you, babe. You been a bad girl? Not cleaning up after yourself?”

  Amiga hefts her bag.

  “Cleaning just fine, thanks. Maybe you wanna look?”

  Geo swallows, steps back. He’s a squeamish one, that’s why he’s Gate Muscle. Easy, bloodless shit. No one would, or could, threaten Twist on his home turf.

  “You keep that for Twist,” he mutters.

  Amiga shoulders her bag again and walks, Guns on either side of her, up the elaborate stones of the path and in through a front screen pain
ted with a perfect copy of Hokusai’s “Amida Waterfall on the Kiso Road”. Usually Amiga takes time to admire it and the many other Hokusai repros painted on the inner screens, but she’s too distracted. Acquainted as she is with Twist’s techniques, she knows the Guns are merely intimidation; if he wanted her dead, she would be. It still stings though, and she’s still afraid. He’s never used intimidation on her before. Perhaps she’s no longer a favourite? Twist can be fickle.

  The Guns lead her through the house into the Solarium at the back, a fragile pod of glass and metal. Twist’s twist as he likes to call it, its Neo-Gothic ornamental spikes and lancet arches so at odds with the ancient Japanese elegance of the rest of the house. Twist waits there on a spindly Louis chair.

  He doesn’t offer her a seat, though the Solarium’s full of more of the same, which Amiga takes as a bad sign. As they approach, he raises a finger and the Guns move away. Amiga tries to pretend the loosening in her back is unrelated. Yeah, right. And she’s not on the verge of puking either.

  “So. Better late than never,” he says, and this time there’s nothing in his demeanour to reassure.

  She restrains her tongue from going into overdrive on apologies and nods, keeping up that pretence of who he thinks she is.

  “Yeah.”

  “You look a bit worse for wear. Everything okay?”

  “Dandy.”

  Twist looks at her gloved hands.

  “Injury? Again?”

  “Misjudged my exit. No one saw and zero evidence left.”

  He tuts. “You’ve a habit for clumsiness these days, Amiga. Lucky you’re one of my best. Get it seen to, eh? Wouldn’t like anyone thinking I don’t take care of my family.”

  “I will.”

  “See that you do.” He tilts his head in the direction of her shoulder. “Something of mine in there?”

  “There is indeed.”

  Amiga hooks the black sack out of her bag, trying to conceal the overwhelming relief she feels at finally being rid of it. Placing it on the table, she loosens the ties, revealing a half squashed human head, neatly drained of blood and missing eyes, ears and nose. The resulting holes are sewn up with coarse black thread. In life, this head belonged to a lowdown piece of drug-running shit called Nero. Delusions of grandeur. His real name was apparently Terence. And now it’s mud.