Escapology

by Ren Warom

  It’s everyone else he’s worried about at the moment. He anticipates maybe another twenty minutes, probably less, before someone else has a fix on this exact building, this very room, and comes after him. He’s beginning to feel like a chew toy in a room full of terriers.

  “Adequate.” Is Yang’s response. Terse. Tinged with cold humour. That’s when Shock knows Yang is not going to wait. Yang nods at Joon. “Your recompense is in the usual account.”

  Joon sidles out, sparing Shock an apologetic glance he scorns. She doesn’t care. No one does. Not that Shock would in her shoes. It’s just business, and as usual Shock’s working for the wrong people. He makes no sound as they drag him through that dark hollow into the next room. Shit. It’s exactly what he knew it would be. One chair, a ton of plastic, and a woman known only as Pill. And nobody likes taking her medicine. She studies him as he’s dragged in, stripped of his jacket and shirt, and secured to the chair.

  “Skinny,” she states, to no one in particular.

  Yang appears in the doorway.

  “Make him talk. We need to know about Emblem, how it works.”

  “Are we in a hurry?”

  “No,” Yang says, and offers Shock another of those brief, cold smiles, faintly smug. “We’re well protected. You can take as long as you like.”

  Those words might be a blatant lie, and Shock might be fully aware of that, but that doesn’t stop his heart from stuttering, slipping, and sinking into his boots.

  Cavalry on Blades

  Wearing Deuce’s homemade hyper-goggles—multi-functioning J-Net connected smartware—Amiga blades at double-time speed to Sakkura on Shock’s heels, fuming at her stupid self. And at Shock, the idiot, who’s in serious need of help right now. Lucky for him, he has a cavalry. Unlucky for him, she’s running late. But she has a solid plan. Sneak in signal dark, snatch Shock from wherever he is, whether he’s willing or not, and whisk him away to Jong Phu.

  Deuce is tracking Shock by his signal. He’s got her blocked from it, much to her annoyance, convinced she can’t do this and handle that. Oh he of little faith. Once they have Shock secure, Deuce says he can hide the signal noise temporarily with some hands-on help from his buds. Then they’ll figure out what the hell do to with Shock now he’s achieved the impossible.

  Amiga fumes a little harder at the thought. Trust that fucking idiot to actually pull this off. Why couldn’t he pull his usual stunt and run for it? Jeez you can’t even rely on people to be unreliable.

  Amiga.

  Wobbling like a drunken bird, Amiga manages to stay on the line, stay alive, but her heart damn near gives out, pumping hard enough to pop.

  ’Sup boss?

  I have a runaway I need lassoing.

  She was wondering when the shit-tsunami might hit. Stellar.

  Wouldn’t be anything to do with the images on every vid feed in the Slip, would it?

  It would.

  Amiga rolls her eyeballs hard enough to braid her optic nerves. Typical. Now she has to try to wriggle out of obligation.

  Shock Pao again, Twist? No freaking way. He’s a nightmare. He’s fucking smoke.

  He’s got something of mine.

  Twist is furious. Serves him right. Doubtless he’s tried to double-cross the Queens, a level of stupid she thought only losers like Shock Pao could hit. If only they could crush Twist flat. Oh what she wouldn’t give for such an easy way out of her current employment issues.

  Again, he’s smoke. I’m not a freaking magician.

  He’s not smoke at the moment, says Twist, grim satisfaction underlying the heavy lashings of aggro in his tone. He’s in Sakkura. I’ll link you. Heads up, his signal’s a bit strange.

  She’s about to reply when the link-up hits, making her feet stutter again, lose their rhythm. Fuck, no wonder Deuce blocked her from this shit. Shock’s signal is like a dropped mic, all high screeching feedback and white noise. Feels like sickness: that shudder in the bones, the nausea in the pit of the belly. Where’s anti-bac for the drive when you need it?

  Twist’s voice slices into her thoughts, Move it, Amiga, and when you have him, bring him straight to me. I don’t like to be kept waiting.

  At your home?

  Where else? He says it like it’s the simplest thing in the world to escort a wanted man to Sendai when the Gung’s most vicious bastards are all after him.

  Jim Dandy, she snaps as he cuts her off.

  Such confidence she’ll obey, that it’ll even be possible. Ordinarily she’d have to try nonetheless, but there’s that tiny matter of this being Emblem and therefore not the sort of delivery she’d ever drop into Twist’s hands. All she has left are her principles, withered and ill used, but enough to prevent her from sinking quite that low. Before this moment, refusing Twist was a dangerous enough task. Now? Lethal to her health. To the health of everyone she cares about.

  Freaking out hard, Amiga whips along the line. Shock’s twenty minutes ahead of her on a small vehicle, possibly a bike, and moving fast toward Sakkura’s border. Amiga’s got a horrible feeling about that. He should take the outskirts, head for some of Sakkura’s safe houses, but he won’t. As if to prove her point, his vehicle hits the border, and keeps going. Deuce cannons into her IM, radiating alarm.

  Shock’s left Sakkura. I thought he’d follow the limits but he went straight through to Nanking. Yang’s territory.

  I know, Deuce. Something’s bugging her about it being Nanking, and not just the whole Yang/Twist super-rivalry thing either.

  How?

  Twist.

  Oh fucking hell. Do you need to drop out of this?

  Not. Even. I’m good. He linked me to Shock’s signal though, and it’s horrendous. You got anything for horrendous?

  Fuck’s sake, Amiga. Sure. IMing a signal damper and some stronger VA for your drive. The VA will not feel nice, but that’s tough shit. Use it. Stay safe.

  Not nice. Understatement. The damper works a charm, she can hear Shock without feeling him, but the VA takes over from that discomfort. Sitting like wire wool in the head, poking painful, imaginary loose ends into the soft matter of her brain. Gritting her teeth, Amiga tries to focus only on the movement of her blades, and that’s when it hits her. Not a metro. Something worse.

  I know why he’s in Nanking, she tells Deuce.

  Oh?

  Joon Bug.

  Shock knows Joon Bug?

  Well duh. Haunts. Top level. Of course he does.

  I thought he didn’t mingle.

  Not often, which means I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know that she’s affiliated with Yang, or he wouldn’t be with her right now.

  Clusterfuck much? Yang won’t kill him though. Pretty sure Emblem’s not extractable at the moment, especially not from a dead man.

  Doesn’t matter. Pill works for Yang, remember? I’m twenty minutes behind. She can do things in twenty minutes that will make Shock wish he were dead.

  Deuce has no response to that, there’s nothing to say, and Amiga has more immediate problems than Shock’s predicament. An urgent need to get onto the Nanking lines if she wants to reach him before he’s too damaged to move without a stretcher. There’s no junction at this point, of course there wouldn’t be, that’d be easy, or suspiciously convenient, but there are several places where the Nanking line veers close enough to jump if you’re insane, desperate and lacking in sense.

  “I’m not,” she mutters to herself, through chattering teeth. “Oh hell, I am.”

  Ignoring the fact that twice is not a habit, even if it’s within the space of a week, Amiga puts on a burst of speed as the Nanking line appears in the distance. Just like jumping over to the drone, it’s plain stupidity, but she had no time to think about that, and she has no time to think about this. The jump is long, roughly fifty metres, over a drop so high the ground’s hidden under cloud, but she doesn’t dwell on it. Think without thinking, that’s the trick, and it’s something Cleaners learn to do early on, or they have very short careers. Amiga’s been a
t this a long-arse time.

  Disengaging her magnets at full speed, she leaps, paying little attention to the sudden screaming of a system thrown into panic mode by the loss of solid ground. The line seems too far and she spends the first few seconds convinced that she’ll never reach it, convinced that death is the obvious consequence of her actions. Her perspective changes in what seems like a heartbeat. Too far away to right fucking there, solid and unassailable, and she lets out a scream, unprepared. Instinctively, her hands fly up to protect her from impact—and instinct saves her too.

  Use bladers enough and controlling them becomes a reflex. Her drive switches the magnets on full strength the moment her legs flip toward the fast approaching line. The magnets attract, pulling her in at triple speed to reconnect. Impact hurts every bone and muscle in her legs; her knees groaning as propulsion and magnetic hold collide, flinging her face first toward the unforgiving strip of solid steel. Wheeling her arms to prevent collision, she hears the angry whine of the next mono shrieking at her rear. Amiga shrieks with it and pushes off against the traction in the soles of her bladers, opting for speed over balance and hoping it works.

  It’s ugly, n00b graceless, but she finds her stride in a series of awkward full body jerks and shoots off, the headwind rushing before the mono giving her a welcome boost. Unable to look back and check, all she can do is gamble on having enough space to disembark the line when she needs to without being flattened. In her head, amidst the haywire sparking of a brain barely out of crisis, she still has that lock on Shock’s scrambled signal: until it disappears.

  Deuce!

  I know. On it. He’s been blocked but it’s amateur-hour stuff.

  How long until everyone else breaks this and pinpoints his position?

  Depends on the quality of their Tech team. Less than thirty mins for sure. There. Back.

  The signal comes back so abruptly she hisses. But she knows where they are now. This line won’t get her there, and she hasn’t time to follow it around and switch to the other circle line, the one winding through Nanking’s centre within spitting distance of the very building Shock’s inside. After the next three stops, she’ll have to get off and run. In bladers. Typical. Amiga snarls into the wind.

  “Bastard.”

  It takes ten excruciating minutes, blasting ahead of the mono on brutal headwinds and aching legs. Judging it to the millisecond, she disengages her bladers and jumps off at the fourth platform, the mono whining to a stop at her back, the pressure of it throwing her forward, blasting her hair around her face. Close. Too close. She takes the shoot down, and hits the sidewalk sprinting, wincing at the sound of bladers on concrete. They really aren’t made for this. Not that they’ll break. But her ears might. Possibly her ankles too.

  Nanking has all the appeal of a crowded mono cabin. The air’s cold but thick, and nigh on unbreathable. With all these tiny alleys and pathways squeezed between ’scrapers, she’d have thought wind would find a way through, but it’s obviously an unwelcome visitor here. She can relate. Following Shock’s signal as fast as she can in these stupid boots, she tries not to think about what he’s going through. His signal’s so screwed it all sounds like pain, and trying to figure out what’s Emblem and what’s Pill will only slow her down.

  There’s no bike outside the building, meaning Joon Bug’s gone. No surprises there. Joon’s not the type to be around violence unless she’s handing it out. Casually strolling past to nip down the side alley, Amiga checks the time. She’s taken more than she thought getting here. Shit.

  Deuce.

  Here. What’s up?

  I’m by the building. His signal still blocked to the others?

  He hesitates, and in that tiny pause she reads the worst before he even says it.

  He’s been visible on all freqs for over five minutes. You need to move. There’s one hell of a crowd headed your way.

  “Gee, thanks for the heads up,” she mutters, though there was no point telling her till now. It’s not like she could have bladed harder, or run faster.

  Cramming her hands into her gloves, designed to muffle sound on top of all their other clever tricks, Amiga leaps for the lowest fire-exit balcony. Scales the staircase with swift, economical grace. Outside the correct floor she pauses for a second, using Deuce’s goggles to link with every other signal in the building. Yang’s got about 150 troops inside, patrolling in pairs. Joy.

  She clicks on her dart gun. Damn thing carries barely any ammo, but it’s the easiest way to avoid hand-to-hand combat. If she’s injured there’s no way she’s getting Shock to safety. She’s got to get him out of here first anyway, and there’s no way out but the way she’s come in, which will play havoc with whatever damage Pill’s done.

  “This is the real world, he’ll have to deal if he wants out,” she mutters furiously, attaching a small rappelling line to the balcony. She peers over. Once they’re down, they can get out the back way, but after that…

  Deuce I need a schematic, preferably adaptive. I’ve got to get Shock back to Jong-Phu through whatever hell is on the way.

  I’ll see what I can do.

  Don’t see, just do. Clock’s ticking, she snaps.

  You know I will. I’ve got a temp block to put on Shock, too. I won’t use it until you’re out, because it won’t last long or save you from immediate attack, only shield you from prying eyes once you’re away. Twenty mins to half hour max. His signal is continuing to ramp up. Be careful, Amiga. His tone is calming, sends waves of guilt washing over her, but there’s no time to apologize and he wouldn’t need her to, which makes her feel worse.

  Amiga breaks in as softly as she climbed. Cleaners have all sorts of skills, and apart from murder, breaking into things is arguably her finest. Expecting to hear Shock screaming or otherwise responding to Pill’s work, she’s deeply concerned by the silence. Has Pill gone too far already? Moving off down the corridor, primed to act, she hears distant gunfire, followed by shouts from downstairs. That’ll be the crowd Deuce mentioned. Oh smart, let everyone know you’re on the way in before you arrive. Twist would never stand for it, that’s why he’s sent her. One Cleaner to do the job of an army.

  “I am in such deep shit,” she says, flattening herself into a doorway as guards from all floors thunder down to the lower levels.

  Yang won’t have left Shock unguarded, which is a problem. Amiga will need to be long gone before they find the bodies. In this situation, with warfare on his doorstep, Yang will avoid alerting others to Shock’s escape. He’ll send a maximum ten of his people after her, no more, but she hasn’t time to dispense with that many, not whilst protecting Shock. Everything depends on speed.

  She finds her way to Shock as much by smell as the scrambled wail of his signal: the thick, metal tang of his blood hangs like smog outside the room. Amiga holds the back of her hand up to her nose and scans briefly. Yeah, Yang’s favourite heavies are inside. Time to do her job. Bracing, she snaps her foot at the handle, smashing the door open, the noise drowned out by the gunfire and shouting from below.

  Yang’s heavies run at her, pulling guns from holsters strapped against their ribs. She lifts her arm, downs them with two precise darts, one through each right eye. Pill’s directly behind them; serene, swift, and blood spattered, wielding what look like serrated saws for rib separation. With no time for artistry, or darts, Amiga ploughs forward, grabbing both the torturer’s arms and driving her forehead into that bland, bloodied face with everything she’s got. Fight dirty, fight quick, she learnt that in her first week of Cleaner training.

  Pill grunts, staggers, and drops to the floor, shedding her blades like leaves. Amiga assesses the situation. Guards dead, good. Pill out cold, which is a shame. Amiga has a rule: she won’t kill the helpless, but she boots Pill in the head for good measure, twice, and goes through to collect Shock. One look at him tells her how hard the next bit is going to be.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake. You’re a mess.”

  Secured to a chair with plasti
c ties, he’s half naked and drenched in blood; his head drooping onto his chest, tangling dyed hair into red gore. She flicks out a knife and goes to cut him loose, kneeling between his legs. Up close the damage is eye watering. Six missing fingertips, no nails, significant bruising to the torso, arms and neck, and cuts fucking everywhere. Amazing how many times you can cut a body before it gives out.

  For a moment she worries about his silence. His chest is rising but he seems unconscious. Then he raises his head slowly to look at her. Above a battered nose, bright blue eyes shine luminous with pain. Good god but those are some eyes. He grins, showing gaps and bloodstained teeth. Awake then. Alert too. Good.

  “Amiga Tanaka. Here to finish what you couldn’t before?” His voice is thin and cracked. Well shit, she never guessed he might’ve clocked her that first time she hunted him. What is he, a wizard?

  “Not here for that, sport. I’m the cavalry.”

  He sneers. “Twist’s cavalry? Thanks, I’ll pass.”

  “Not Twist. Hornets.”

  He stares at her, those blue eyes searching her face like spotlights.

  “For real?”

  “For real. That thing in your head does not belong with anyone like Twist.”

  “No. No it doesn’t.”

  It’s obvious he still doesn’t trust her, but he’s relaxed a little bit. How the hell do you relax with that much damage shrieking in your nerves?

  “I see Pill had fun with you.”

  “Am I still pretty?”

  “Were you ever?”

  He coughs out a laugh, and crimson dribbles down his chin. His face is far too pale beneath the mask of blood.

  Finishing with the ties, she braces her arms either side of him.

  “Are you good to walk?”

  He looks at his legs. “She used a hammer, I think.”

  “Feet or thighs?”

  “Thighs.”

  Amiga examines his legs, digging right in to feel past muscle. No broken bones. He doesn’t react either, which is unusual.