Escapology

by Ren Warom

  This is the IndoChinese quarter, the very outskirts of it. A slum called Pimchi. The only J-Hack collective Shock’s had dealings with works out of this district. They’re the “Quạ”. The Crows. Who descend en masse and leave chaos in their wake. The number of Quạ hospitalized, deceased, arrested or disappeared in the seven years they’ve been a going concern is sobering. Of the original members, only five remain, surrounded by an ever-shifting, ever-changing murder made up of some 175 Quạ recruits, Fails and non-Fails alike. Out here, no one gives a shit. Not really.

  Of those remaining five originals, one is Shock’s connection, Heng. Or Well Heng, if you’re a close buddy. Anyone not within his inner circle tries to call him that ends up less Well Heng. Shock calls him Aitch, just to be contrary. Heng has a workshop in whatever dingy, well-hidden hole the Quạ call home, but he also has one in the local high-rise shopping mart, for paying customers, which is what Shock intends to be.

  Inside the shopping mart, a block-like tangle of shops and stalls, crowded and filled with the hysterical squawk of live poultry, it’s like midday in high summer. Humid air clinging stickily to the skin, tempers rising, the deranged buzz of flies courting the food stalls. Although exhausted and in serious pain, Shock takes the stairs, fully aware that stepping into an elevator here is basically asking to be mugged, or worse.

  He finds Heng, a slightly overweight, classically handsome Cambodian sat at his monitors, goggles down, deep into a chat with some girl in a pink “YO! Takei!” j-pop band tee, who pops gum more than she talks and radiates boredom toxic as nuclear waste. Trust Heng to go old Tech. The guy knows as much about new Tech as Shock does, maybe more now and then, right on the cutting edge of what’s going down in the community, but he’s always dabbling in this ancient crap. Who wants to face-to-face on a screen when you can do it all mind-to-mind?

  “Girlfriend?” Shock asks, when Heng spots him and dials off.

  Heng looks disgusted. “No, jerk. Cousin. She’s got some problem at Cad. My mak told me to give her some advice. I’m sure you noticed her high levels of interest.”

  “The enthusiasm burned.”

  “Damn right. So what brings you to Pimchi, Shock? Usual shit?”

  Shock collapses into a rickety-looking chair next to Heng’s desk and nods.

  “Usual shit.”

  “Can you pay?”

  Shock grins. He likes Heng. Zero BS.

  “I have flim. Enough for what I need.”

  “And what is it you need?”

  “Need a full quota of scums and the code specs for a Hive drone.” He winces as he says the latter. Not only is the request stupid, because no one is daft enough to try cracking Hive, it’s also probably going to be difficult to find. Shock may end up owing Heng a serious favour or three, if he lives…

  Heng heaves forward, staring.

  “Hive? You’re going in to Hive?” He seems genuinely concerned, which is a thing. Heng doesn’t much care for Shock. No one of sense does.

  Shock shrugs. “For my health.”

  “Flim? Or breathing?”

  “Make a wild guess.”

  Heng makes a face. “Ouch. My condolences.”

  “I’m not dead yet. And I don’t intend to be.”

  “Well, we all have the best intentions…”

  “That we do,” Shock agrees, liking the direction of this conversation less and less. “Do you have what I need?”

  Grabbing a set of keys from in amongst the metric tonne of crap cluttering his desk, Heng gets up, scraping his chair back, making it scream against the floor. Everything’s screaming today. It’s lucky Shock’s not sensitive to signs and portents, or else he might get worried.

  “Fifty grenades do?”

  “Reckon so.”

  It only takes ten minutes for Heng to return, which is a surprise. He’s got two flash keys, the types that jack directly in. One has those scums; the other holds extensive, beautiful, specs on the Hive drones. Shock can’t quite believe his luck. So he doesn’t.

  “Where the hell you get these?”

  Heng screws up his face. J-Hacks have this bullshit code preventing them spilling info that might be damaging to the collective. Fuck knows they get into enough scrapes to make it necessary, but this is important. Twist said trial and error, which basically means dead Haunts. And here Shock comes to his old connection, sort of a mate—if someone who doesn’t like you much can be called any such thing—and lo and behold he’s got this shit right to hand. Suspicious.

  I mean, okay, Shock needed it right to hand, he’s got very little time. But he’d expected to wait maybe six hours, a little more, for something this tricky to obtain. Expected Heng to have to go around those with an interest in Hive and cajole or bribe the specs out of them. Yet here it is. How involved is Heng in all this shit? Collectives do work for the Gung’s criminal elements but unless he’s got Heng seriously wrong, he’d not be an active participant in the wholesale slaughter of Haunts.

  “You’re not the first Haunt set to cracking Hive recently, okay?” Heng says at last, reluctantly. “I’ve had at least three here, including Feng Ho, and all of them are dead. The kind of luck I expect to find you with, and here you are. Presumably next.”

  Guts twanging relief like guitar strings, Shock lets air into his lungs. Okay, so Heng is still legit, and unless Shock’s mistaken he’s legit concerned too. Since when did Heng give a shit about what happens to him? Maybe he knows the deal. Maybe that’s why.

  “What do you know about this, Aitch?”

  “Not word one. I keep my eyes and ears closed.”

  “Any of the others dragging luck as bad as mine?”

  “Well of course, but you’re the only one had it coming to you. What happened to you, man?” Heng stares at Shock wonderingly, and with a little distaste, like he’s some new species of bacteria, glowing in the corner of a dark bathroom. “How’d you end up on the thin end of the wedge with all your fucking skill? I mean, you’re in the highest percentile, could’ve been a major player in the J-Hack community, another fucking Breaker, and you piss it all away. I like you man, genuinely, but you’re an idiot.”

  Heng means what he says, which is another surprise. Shock was sure Heng hated his guts. He doesn’t really know how to deal with this. No one cares for him. Why would they? For a moment he’s tempted to pretend he has a friend. Unburden himself. Admit that he wanted one thing and he couldn’t see anything beyond it—not even his life disappearing down the fucking drain—until it was too late to take it back.

  Unable to find the energy to put that into words or the courage to trust another human being with it, Shock simply shrugs, pays for his gear and fucks off. Whatever happens now, this here, this gig, it’s his swan song. End of the line. Time to get off in one piece, or crash. His choice, if he has one? He intends to remain intact. Hah. As Heng so eloquently put it: we all have the best intentions.

  It’s four in the afternoon. Trusting Twist’s semi-promise of forty-eight hours about as much as he trusts Twist, Shock wants to be ready to do this in the morning. First thing. If he really pushes himself, he can force another ten hours of consciousness out of his aching head. Will it be long enough?

  It’ll take as long as it takes to build a Hive worker skin-matrix perfect enough and long-lasting enough to get him in and out. Because the signal is only for Core, everything else is on his skills alone. And he’s got to get to Hive first, which means getting through an eye-watering array of VA. He knows what it is, the other Haunts made a record of each level, but knowing is not the same as doing. And they’re all dead for a reason.

  Way beyond jittery, he goes back to his P.O., which doubles as a locker for anything too valuable to stash in his cage, and fetches his tablet, taking it to a small water park he likes in Ginzo. He stays there until the sun goes down, planning and building, fussing over every detail; buying coffees, sodas and greasy, tasteless udon from the brightly painted booth at the centre of the park.

  Night comes,
and the biome trees hit maximum light. Their hazy blue-tinted glow is pleasant, peaceful even, but not enough for him to see his complicated specs properly, leaving him unable to work. So he wanders back toward Ginzo proper; sets up again in a twenty-four-hour coffee bar, snacking on bowls of cashews and dried squid and rubbing at aching eyes. It’s two A.M. before he’s satisfied with his plan, his skin-matrix. He’d prefer to be happy rather than satisfied, but he’s too tired, too wired, to continue. His countdown is near enough over. Tomorrow he has to do the job, and nail it. Or that’s it.

  Desperate to rest, he hurries back to his apartment block. Careens to his cage, his waiting mattress. He falls in fully dressed and drowns in sleep straight away, as if it was waiting for him, deep and encompassing, the ocean in his bed. He dreams of the birds in Sendai. They’re singing in cherry blossom trees, but one by one their beaks fall silent and they drop to the earth.

  Inner Spaces and Awkward Places

  Wearing nothing but black market GarGoil panties, Amiga rifles savagely through her cupboards hunting for something that might pass for edible if she turns her head and squints. Muttering under her breath, she slams each door shut as she’s done. There aren’t many cupboards in her hovel and tearing through them does not feel half as satisfying as it should, so she kicks the bottom doors, and then the table. It slides across the floor, bumping into the sofa, and her washing tips majestically to the floor in picture-perfect slow-mo.

  “Shoulda had breakfast at the boys’ place, you fucking idiot,” she snarls at herself, grabbing clean clothes and chucking them back on the table without folding them. Why bother? They only get creased when she puts them on.

  She really should have eaten at the boys’ place. She’s starved and there’s nothing nutritious here, unless plastic plates, dusty glasses and a half empty bottle of flat beer give your stomach a hard-on. They don’t do anything for hers. She’d kill for one of Knee Jerk’s tamagoyaki. Boy’s talented, that’s all there is to it. Except she scarpered like the unmitigated moron that she is, and so it’s her own damn fault her stomach’s starting to sound like a rusty axle.

  Honestly she has no idea why she ran for it. She’s spent most of the last twenty-four hours waiting for Breaker to get back to her shacked up on their couch, hugging a pillow and checking in on EVaC every ten minutes; getting fed too, which beats this shit. Well, okay, she knows why she ran for it. Deuce came back. From Fen Maa’s to be precise, from her swanky fuckin’ panky apartment somewhere in Hangoon. Rich bitch with rich folks. Vomit.

  How’d Amiga know he was there? Huh, obvious. He was wearing a fucking suit of all things, and he looked good. Enough to make her want to throw up just about every bone in her body. And she needs those. So she grabbed up her things and split, the heavenly scent of tamagoyaki following her like a lost puppy.

  “No two ways about it, bitch,” she admits, throwing herself on the couch miserably. “Deuce is making you crazy.”

  It’s about the last thing she needs right now. Her head’s been a bit like an ocean full of continental shards—hazardous. That’s basically why she landed up on the boys’ sofa, nurse-maiding. She hates worrying about EVaC, worrying is weakness, but it beats hell out of going on a merry-go-round of thoughts about what she saw down with Maggie and Mollie. The worst thing about the truth is that you can’t hide from it, especially not when it’s tearing through your goddamn head with giant circular blade jaws.

  She rams both hands into the mess of her hair and groans. Shouldn’t have thought about it. It’s stolen her sleep. All she sees when she closes her eyes are giant engines, their circular jaws working ceaselessly, tearing apart the world. The sound of it is something terrible, and she’d give just about anything to block it out. She’s considering breaking out a bump or two to carry that sound, those visions, away on the tide. Except she has to be straight because, if Maggie and her angel are right, Breaker’s due to call.

  “Fuck me, Amiga girl,” she tells herself, as if she didn’t already know. “You run at trouble like it’s an all-you-can-eat cake buffet.”

  Knuckles dance staccato beats across the plastic of her hovel. She groans again.

  “Whaaaat? Go away, Deuce. I’m cocooning.”

  “Asking me what and telling me to go away straight after? Sounds more like contrariness than cocooning to me. Can I come in?”

  “I only have panties on and I have no inclination to dress up,” she yells. “Talk through the fuckin’ wall.”

  “I’m coming in. Either get something on or put up with me trying not to look at your tits.”

  Amiga grumbles under her breath “Ohhhh fu’fuck’sake, fuckin’ difficult bloody bastard.”

  “I heard that.” His voice is near her hatch. She shrieks annoyance, grabbing a top from the floor and dragging it on just as he lands, light-footed, on her table, still wearing the suit pants and the shirt, unbuttoned at the top. Be still her tango-ing heart. Seriously. Cease and desist.

  “So, this place is still a mess.” He holds out a bento box. There’s a cold beer hooked under his thumb too.

  “And? So is yours. Those for me?”

  “Who else?”

  She reaches out and snags them, snatching like a toddler. She can smell what’s in the bento already, tamagoyaki. Probably cold, but who gives a shit. Manna, that’s what this is. She pops the top of the beer and knocks back half as Deuce takes a seat next to her.

  “Sit down, why don’t you,” comes out snarkier than she’d intended, almost enough to curdle her beer.

  He gives her this long, considering look, and then says softly, “If you didn’t want to dump me, you shouldn’t have.”

  The words react on her like wasp stings on allergic flesh. Where’s a mental epi-stim when she needs one? Unable to deal, she ignores him instead, placing her beer down on the table with a bit too much force and peeking in her bento. Oh my glob. Not just tamagoyaki. California rolls. Rice and green pepper. Pickled ginger. And a cucumber cut to look like a panda. Knee Jerk is a god. She pulls out the chopsticks and starts shovelling it in before her stomach forces its way out through a nostril and starts without her.

  Paying no attention to Deuce is harder than she expected, what with the ridiculous, sonar-like awareness of his presence she has going on. Why is nothing simple? Why does she have to feel bad for feeling bad when he’s around and taking it out on him? Oh yeah. Because it’s not his fault. Shit. She starts to formulate an apology, but he talks before she can.

  “Ignoring me. Nice.”

  And just like that she’s angry again. She shrugs, says through a mouthful of rice and egg, “I had a problem. I’m over it.”

  He doesn’t reply for so long she spares him a glance, and stops mid-chew. He looks upset. A lot upset. And angry. She explains through the mouthful of sushi she’s currently experiencing taste-bud orgasm over.

  “Look, that was harsh. But really, I ended things for all the right reasons and yeah, I totally regret it, but I wouldn’t take it back. This whole snotty bitch thing I have going on, it’s my problem. I will get a handle on it. You didn’t need a mess like me cluttering up your life.”

  He crosses his arms and leans back.

  “It takes a year for you to admit this and you do it with a mouthful of rice? Really? Gee, Amiga, I guess all I can say is, thanks for making decisions about my life without asking. You didn’t think I should have a say?”

  Amiga holds a piece of ginger in her chopsticks and nibbles thoughtfully.

  “No.”

  “Wow.” He shakes his head. “Maybe I am better off.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  He leans forward then.

  “You hate being alone. You hate being what you are. This family here is the first thing you’ve had in a long time that means anything to you. And I don’t think it’s arrogance to say that what we had was part of that. But you cut me away from you without warning or explanation and now you’re trying to cut yourself away from the group as a whole too. You’re
running scared from people who care about you, because… What? Afraid you’ll lose us?”

  Amiga hasn’t cried in forever, not even when she dumped Deuce. Now she wants to cry. There’s this pressure, hard enough to hurt her chest, prickling needle-sharp in the corners of her eyes. Amiga takes a moment, because this will not do, however close to the fucking bone he just sliced with that. When she’s calm, when she can talk without crying a river all over her food, she puts the bento down.

  “I’m not,” she says, loving her voice for coming out so calm, and hating her guts for going all Pompeii pre-eruption on her. Shoving emotion down should not feel this dangerous, she’s been doing it for years. “I’ve gone out of the way to help EVaC. That’s not holding anyone out. That’s not cutting anyone off.”

  Deuce sighs. “He’s unconscious, babe. Don’t try and tell me that doesn’t make it easier to care for him, just like his habit of only ever talking bollocks makes it easy for you to remain close to him instead of shutting him out like you have the rest of us.”

  This is what she loves and hates most about Deuce. He knows her, and she can’t make excuses with him, can’t improvise emotion or plain lie to his face. Somehow, without her ever having told him a damn thing about what goes on in her singularly fucked-up mind, he’s always been able to see it and call it. And he’s never wrong. Bastard.

  “Maybe. But it’s a start. Yes?”

  He sighs again, he clearly doesn’t agree. “I suppose.” He looks at her carefully, and immediately she sees him worry as he picks up her underlying distress like a goddamn mental detector. Why does he have to do that? Why is she so goddamn grateful that he does? “Subject change?”

  Ah, that’s why. “Please.” She picks up the bento again. Her appetite is all but bust but she’s damned if she’ll stop eating Knee Jerk’s divine handiwork. He should be a saint of food or some shit.