"I had no idea."
"Really? No, for real? Shit, how sheltered are you?"
I stared down at my soda. "More than I thought."
"F'real? Shit, Erica, they track everything. Tags in your car. Your ChicagoCard is pinged every time you pass an advertisement, and they got drones up in the sky that keep an eye on everything."
My chest felt tight. "Drones? Really?"
Ruamano laughed. "Are you serious? How can you not know this? Shit, CPD got thousands of drones all up in the air 'keeping us safe' all up higher than you can see, and cameras in all public buildings."
My head was spinning. "How can they keep track of all that information?"
"Well mostly they don't," Ruamano said. "Ain't like they pay hundreds of cops to sit in front of cameras and spy on people all day. Like... if they watching you they watching you, but mostly, ain't nobody care. But they store all the data and they got, like, computers to sort through it all if they want to track you back a few days."
"I had no idea."
Ruamano shook her head. "Man. You been up to anything you shouldn't have been?"
I looked up. "Nothing outside."
"Hey, it's all good. Drone system as underfunded as all the other shit in this city. Half of them just fly around blind. Ain't nothing gonna be noticed unless you get unlucky, and if you unlucky?" She smirked. "Shit, you might get hit by a bus."
"If you say so."
"No reason to get all upset about it. Nothing you can do anyway. Just act like there's always a camera on you. Cuz there is."
I looked at the image of Yeong. "Can you tap into that? Track him? Or follow the guys who attacked me back to where they came from?"
"Ain't that easy," Ruamano said. "Not without the software that sifts through it all. And before you ask, no, I can't break into that. And the guys that can... you can't afford them."
"Okay." I should have felt frustration at this, or worry about how much I was being watched, but I'd gone all empty inside again. It was all I could do to focus on what Ruamano was telling me.
"A'ight, so, Yeong. I was able to hack his phone, and go through some of his records. Nothing too shady there. Only thing that sticks out is a couple calls to an IP address in Bedford Park... a warehouse."
"Can you find out anything about it?" I asked.
"Yeah, hold up." She took a sip from her soda, then tapped a few keys. A profile of the warehouse building replaced Yeong. "Just a warehouse. Probably just checking on work shit."
"Its ownership is unlisted. If it's a Novabio asset, they'd have to tag it as their own." I wasn't sure how I knew that. "And he's an executive personal assistant... he wouldn't be handling official shipping business personally."
"Something off-books?" Ruamano suggested.
"Maybe. How long is that pill you gave me going to last?"
"All day. Sell you another tomorrow, you want it, but don't take too many."
I stood. "Can you send that address to me?"
She looked up at me. "The warehouse? Why?"
"I need to go check it out."
"Why?"
"It's the only lead I have."
Her face turned serious. "Bitch, you crazy. You need to lie down."
I turned to her. "What I need is to find out why this man is trying to kill me. I need to get some control over my life. I need to do something, because the only alternative is to lay down and die."
She muttered to herself in Maori, then shook her head. "Okay. Okay. Sent. I think you're crazy, but you... you go be you."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me." Her grin was gone. "I should just tell you to fuck off."
"No, I appreciate it. I really do."
"Yeah, well." She stood. "Just stop pointing guns at me and we're square."
I blushed. "Sorry."
She grinned. "It's all good. Go on. If you don't get yourself killed, come on back, let me know what's going on."
"You really want to know?"
"Shit, this is the most interesting shit going on around here." She grinned. "It's this or TV, and I fucking hate TV."
CHAPTER 19: BEE AND EEE
Bedford Park is one of Chicago's heavier industrial areas, southwest of Canaryville. I was able to take the Orange line out as far as Midway airport, but that's the end of the line... after that, it was a bus transfer, and they don't come by very often after midnight.
I'd waited until after dark to set out both to let the painkillers Ruamano had given me kick in, and because her frank talk about the surveillance state had become had left me feeling edgy and exposed. I hadn't much thought about it, but there were cameras everywhere. On the train. At the bus stop. Even down near the Block, though most of those had been damaged or defaced by the local gangs.
Those were just the obvious ones, though. The ones you were supposed to see. Big. Visible. A deterrent. There were doubtlessly more cameras, well hidden, including the CPD drones hovering tirelessly in the sky above, an unceasing network of electronic eyes that saw everything.
And yet, crime persisted. Life continued. If people were safer, you couldn't tell it from the news feeds... one of the stations I watched on the display on the side of the bus shelter while waiting at Midway had a steadily climbing "weekly death-count" that ticked up every time someone was shot. In near real-time.
So the eyes, the electronic eyes above and throughout the city could see crimes being committed. But they couldn't stop them. Life went on. People went about their business, both above and below board. The business of living, the business of dying.
I'd taken Ruamano's words to heart, though, with my hoodie drawn up, face obscured by my bangs and the cheap black AR sunglasses I'd printed up at a kiosk out in front of the airport.
They weren't great, compared to what was available to those with real money to spend, but the glasses synced with my ChicagoCard well enough that I could see the bus-tracker at the stop without having to pull the card out of my pocket. The higher-end glasses could be controlled by sub-vocal mic or even eye movement... these were a simple display peripheral, so the thumb on my card in my pocket still controlled the menu.
While I sat and waited for the bus I didn't so much come up with a plan as I considered my total lack of one. I was still running on instinct. I had no idea what I'd find at the warehouse, how it tied to Yeong Dae, or what I'd do when I got there. Maybe I'd find a reason why he was so eager to have me killed. Maybe I'd find some blackmail material that I could use to make him stop. Maybe I'd find nothing, and I was wasting my time.
Maybe.
Nobody gave me a second look when I got on the bus, and I realized that a lot of people moved around the city this way. Hooded. Faces down. Dark glasses at night. Not everyone was so comfortable operating under constant scrutiny. Now that I thought about it, I remembered seeing some of the Te Arawa wearing masks... both conventional dust-masks, and full-face masks. I'd taken it for youthful idiosyncrasy, but maybe they were just foiling the ceaseless surveillance.
Did it work? Or did they just track the masks?
Somehow the understanding that other people also chafed at this lack of privacy made it slightly bearable. It wasn't just me being out-of-time. It was everyone.
A point of connection, however slight.
As I found my seat on the bus, a small display in the corner of my glasses showed the fare deducting from my Assistance Credit balance. I'd have to find a way to recoup some of my expenses soon, or I wouldn't be able to afford food to last the month.
***
From the outside Yeong's warehouse was indistinguishable from the others in the industrial park: single-story, broad, flat, windowless. I watched it from the shadows of an awning across the street, hidden, I hoped, from any cameras covering the area. The whole neighborhood was surprisingly well-lit and well maintained, a concrete forest of LED streetlights and silent structures, flat planes and boxy featureless architecture.
Some of the warehouses sported company branding, but most were b
lank, without signage or street address... it was only through my AR shades that I was able to identify the warehouse I was after. There wasn't much else they could offer, though... there weren't any visible network connections going into or out of the building.
That either meant that the connections were hidden—something I assumed was possible—or that it was entirely off-grid.
A barbed-wire-topped cyclone fence marked the perimeter, beyond which lay a well-lit gravel yard leading up to only two entrances, a green windowless door with a keypad and a shuttered delivery bay entrance. A camera on the corner covered both.
There might have been a door around the other side, but I didn't really have a way to get back there... the warehouse property was adjacent to several other lots, each of which had their own fencing and security.
I stood across the street, watching, feeling my breathing and heart-rate slow. The painkiller was having an interesting effect on my chest... it felt sort of numb. Not tingly-numb. For lack of a better term... an absence of feeling. I knew my ribs were broken. I knew I was bruised up. But I didn't feel any of that.
Ruamano had given me some good shit.
As I watched, a security guard emerged from the green door and walked out onto the lot. He moved at a slow leisurely pace, a guard's pace, unhurried but inevitable over the gravel. I watched as he reached the corner and progressed along the broad side of the building.
Time him.
Good advice from the self I used to be... it seemed like the sort of thing one did in these circumstances. I activated the stopwatch function of my ChicagoCard, and a numerical display began counting off the seconds in the corner of my shades.
A few minutes later... okay, exactly six-minutes and eight seconds later... a second guard came around the other corner near the delivery bay. This guy was older, moving more slowly. He walked up to the door, punched in a code on the keypad, and let himself in.
Two guards. Two patrols. Maybe a door on the other side. Maybe more guards inside.
I realized that I was planning to break in. I was strangely okay with that.
The first guard came around at the ten minute mark and let himself in.
Were their patrol routes simply asynchronous or random? I had to wait around for another iteration before making a guess. It took another half-hour before the older guard emerged again.
Two guards, walking a patrol both inside the facility and its perimeter. Assuming there were no other guards inside on a route that didn't take them outside... but the warehouse didn't seem large enough to need that level of coverage. The older guard, whom I nicknamed Ed, emerged from the warehouse every half-hour and took a fifteen minute circuit around the building.
Al, his younger partner, came out every twenty minutes for a ten-minute walk.
Not exactly, no. These guys were professional security, not automatons. But that was about the long and short of it, and it meant there was a longish gap after Al's next return. He'd go in, and Ed would come out almost immediately, giving me a good fifteen minutes inside before he returned.
***
When Ed came back around to let himself into the warehouse, I was over by the corner, out of view but close enough to have a line of sight on the keypad. The AR shades' zoom wasn't much—only double—but it was enough to see the buttons he pressed.
5839.
After he'd gone in I activated a ten-minute countdown on the shades and took off my hoodie, slinging it over the top of the fence's barbed wire. I stepped back a bit, took a run at the fence and scrambled over a lot more nimbly than I'd expected to.
The hoodie protected me from the coils of barbed-wire and I landed on the other side unharmed and without pain. I crouched by the fence, doing a self-inventory, but felt nothing from my ribs.
That gave me pause. Were the pain-killers too effective? Were the edges of my broken ribs ripping me up inside? Was I going to bleed to death without even knowing it?
The idea felt both very real but very distant. Insignificant. I might die, but at this point there was nothing to do for it. I'd committed myself.
I left the hoodie on the fence for my eventual escape, instead crept up to the door, my hair and the shades the only things hiding my face from the security camera on the corner. If anyone was manning the camera... well, they'd see me. Again, not something I could do anything about. Not worth worrying over. But if someone checked the tapes later I didn't want to make identification easy.
Of course, if they were the ones after me, what were they going to do? Try and kill me harder?
Best bet was to not give anyone a reason to review the tapes. Be in. Be out. Be fast.
CHAPTER 20: HEMO POETIC JUSTICE
The interior of the warehouse was dim, lit only by widely spaced lights up on the ceiling. I crept through a disordered maze of heavy-duty plastic tanks, each a cube the size of a subcompact car, stacked floor to ceiling. Each was powered, having a control panel with glowing green LEDs, but didn't give off any information to my glasses.
I of course had no idea what they were or what they were for.
I walked through the corridors created by the stacked units, listening for Al and Ed's return, or indications that anyone else was in the building. Did they have a set route through the stacks? No, that wouldn't make sense. They were probably instructed to walk along the walls, maybe cut through every so often... the stacks weren't ordered enough to allow a set pattern that provided full coverage.
That fact alone occupied my mind as I crept along. It seemed rather unprofessional, which meant that the warehouse probably didn't have any set staff to come in to drop these things off and pick them up, or at least no warehouse manager to design a floor plan.
The squeak of rubber soles on concrete made me freeze, and I slipped into the space between two stacks. It was a tight fit, and I might be injuring my ribs further, but it was the quickest way to avoid detection.
I'd guessed wrong. Ed and Al had compatriots here, inside. And there was a very real chance they'd find me.
The footsteps drew closer, and I stood as still as possible, nose to control panel with the unit in front of me. It seemed simple... a numberless keypad, a dial, a plastic toggle, and a digital readout displaying -112.
Temperature? Possibly. The unit behind me was cool against my back. Were these refrigeration units?
The footsteps passed me and continued on their way. I had six minutes to complete my search before Ed and Al returned, and I had to contend with three guards inside instead of one.
I slipped out from between the units and dropped to one knee, tugging the shipping manifest for the one I'd been facing out of its plastic sleeve.
There were no names or contact information on the slips, only two addresses... the warehouse's, and what was probably a berth down at the port district. I scanned the other miscellaneous information, not knowing what most of it meant, until I came across a term I recognized from my career as a pharmaceutical rep.
Autologous HSC.
Hemopoietic stem cells.
What the hell was Yeong doing with a warehouse full of off-book stem-cells?
I had minutes to go. My hands worked on their own accord, tapping buttons on the middle crate and turning the dial. There was a hiss, a click, and the middle section swung out, revealing rows of thick plastic cylinders with matte metallic caps.
I reached out for one and almost dropped it... it was cold. Enough that it felt like it was burning my hand. The pain was distant, though, and I could handle it if I shifted by grip every few moments.
I pushed on the drawer, and it closed again. Too much noise. I had to move.
Across the building I heard the door click open. Al was back. I had two minutes from when he rounded the corner before Ed returned.
Plenty of time.
CHAPTER 21: INFORMATION AT A PRICE
"What'd you find out?" There was a gleam in Ruamano's eye.
I sat next to her on the couch in her living room in my sweat pants and tank-top, f
rigid canister wrapped in my hoodie, held in my lap.
Her brother was behind us, behind the couch. "You get what you need?" He sounded slightly less impatient.
I looked from her face to his. "I don't know. Maybe."
He snorted. "Yeah, whatever."
"Ruamano, can you look something up for me?"
"Yeah, sure, I—"
"No." Punga folded his arms. "No more freebies."
She scowled at him. "Yo, if I want to help her—"
"For what? She ain't family. She ain't Te Arawa. She's not even a friend."
"It's okay," I said. "I get it."
Punga turned back to me. "Just business, you know? You want something from Te Arawa, you gotta pay. And Ruamano... her skills ain't cheap.
"We can cut you a discount," Ruamano said.
"No we fucking can't," Punga said.
Ruamano stepped up to her brother, pissed, speaking quickly in their shared language.
He replied, more forcefully, and the two engaged in a gradually louder back and forth argument until a monosyllabic shout came from the back room.
"Mō taku hē," they responded in unison.
Ruamano gave her brother a final glare, then strode off behind her partition.
He turned away. "You're done here."
I gathered up my things and left. Punga's attitude had left me emotionally exhausted, sapping away any enthusiasm I felt about my find at the warehouse. It was late. I needed sleep.
***
I found another casserole dish from Mrs. Karaiti sitting on the walkway in front of my door. It came with a note — "It's okay." I should have felt grateful. I should have been touched. I should have felt hungry.
I muscled open the door to my place and found it much as I'd left it... clothes strewn about, bedding torn, door ajar. It looked as though Te Arawa had been true to their word — no one had been in to disturb it further. Still didn't feel safe.
A chill wind was blowing in through the open door, so my first order of business was to try and close it securely. A cursory examination revealed that in breaking in whoever had tossed the place had bent the... the metal thing surrounding the part where the lock pops out—
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