What Have We Done: A Cyberpunk Action Thriller on the edge of LitRPG (When Tomorrow Calls Book 3)

by JT Lawrence

  “Bonechaser is the least of it,” Seth says. His face is pale despite the darkening sky. He throws their clothes at them. “You’ve got to connect right now.”

  Chapter 4

  Running With the Rodents

  Innercity

  Johannesburg, 2036

  Silver adjusts her vintage gas-mask and picks up her pace. Ironically, it makes it more difficult to breathe, not less, but she puts up with the discomfort because there’s no way she’s getting The Black Lung. She’s seen the 4DHD VR animation at school, where they practically shove you right inside the diseased organ to show you what breathing raw city air can do to healthy tissue. So not gonna happen. Besides, the mask is, like, ancient, and totally original thread. Kate tells her that when she was young, like, a hundred years ago, everyone wanted new clothes all the time. They’d spend their weekends in malls spending money on new clothes, even though they had a full wardrobe at home. Even though they knew the shit was mostly FongKong, they wanted the shiny stuff. Bizarro. Imagine working all week for some evil corp and then spending your free time spending what you earned on things you didn’t need, and then get into debt so that you can work some more. Suckers. And it’s not like they didn’t know it, either. They were always saying things like ‘rat race’ and ‘hamster wheel’ but what did they do? They kept on fucking running with the rodents, that’s what. Running and running until they were all burned out and needed to retire at sixty-five. Sixty-five! That’s like giving up on your life when you’re only halfway through. Or die from a heart attack. What a joke. What a brainbleach. What a fucked-up way to live.

  Her mandible chimes 19:14.

  Shifuckfuck, I’m late.

  Her appointment has been set for 19:00, and they said the procedure takes ninety minutes, all-in. Silver hopes it doesn’t run over—she’ll have to hurry if she wants to get home in time for her 21:00 curfew and not make the parental units suspicious.

  Although, Silver sighs, Kate would always be suspicious. Can people be born with a paranoid gene? Kate certainly was. Or maybe she wasn’t born with it … maybe it developed over time. Can’t blame her, really. Kate gets that haunted look when Silver asks her about stuff, like why Marko disappeared from their lives so suddenly and won’t even beam or bullet them, or what happened to James. I mean, she’s not dumb, she knows that her dad died before she was born, but why’re they never allowed to ask questions about him? Talking, not talking, it hurts either way.

  Silver turns a corner, as instructed by her mandible maps, and jogs down an alley wet with greasy puddles that shine in pearlescent colours. 64381, to be exact, if she were to describe it to Kate. She reaches a nondescript door and her dash pings. Silver raps on the painted metal, the same shade of grey as the smoggy dusk sky, and the speakeasy is slid open with a bang. Green eyes like dragon scales.

  “Go home, little girl,” says the owner of the scales. “This is no place for you.”

  Chapter 5

  From Chop to Stab

  Seth’s Apartment

  Johannesburg, 2036

  The women amble reluctantly inside, glowing from the drink and the heat. The air-conditioned apartment wakes them, turns their skin to instabraille. Kate buttons her asymmetrical hoodie right up to her neck. She sees a navy-cream ombré canvas bag on the floor and knows instinctively that Chaser’s body is inside, and shivers.

  Why is Seth so riled up? What can be worse than what just happened to Mally?

  Kate and Keke put their mandibles back on.

  “Kate connect,” she says, and her dashboard appears, her Scribe blinks.

  “Keke connect,” says Keke.

  They’re both hit with a barrage of messages and alerts at the same time. It makes her temples throb and tastes of a scraped metal. She swipes them all away, but as soon as her vision clears, more messages stream in.

  Prioritise.

  The alerts freeze for a second then swirl around each other till the most important ones are at the top. Kate looks at the first one on the list, an Echo.news headline clip posted less than a minute ago, and opens it by thinking Play.

  The video is amateurish, shaky, and not properly focused, but it’s clearly the outside of The Bent Hotel, in Saxonwold, known for its interstellar prices and political dignitary guests. The giant motorised gate is opening and closing, as if someone is sitting on the remote. Then a commotion comes into view, just for a moment: Kate gasps when she sees a terrified woman slam into the wall of the entrance building, as if she’s been thrown at it. Instead of sinking to the floor as Kate expects her to, she scrabbles around, trying to get purchase, trying to get out of the building, but then a hand clamps down on her leg and pulls her back inside. Her mouth is wide open, and Kate feels the woman’s silent scream scrape her skin. She shudders again.

  “What the fuck!” says Keke.

  “Are you watching the same thing as I am?” asks Kate. “Bent?”

  “What? No. The Loop.”

  “Connect to Keke,” says Kate, and she watches on Keke’s interface as the hyperloop speed train careens straight into a stationary cabin and explodes into a violent cloud of smoke and debris. A graphic at the top right of the screen is counting: a rainbow stopwatch as the numbers tick over. 489. 528. 540. Then Kate realises the units are the confirmed fatalities.

  “Watch the Reality DroidChef one,” says Seth.

  Search. Reality DroidChef.

  Hundreds of results come up. Kate chooses the one with the most confirmations. She wants to make sure what she is watching is real news, and not some cyberprankster who thinks it’ll be cool to use his home SFX software and splice it into a major newstream’s channel. The last time that happened, a fake clip of an actress being beheaded in Belarus made it around the globe more than a thousand times before it was outed as quack. The DroidChef clip has more than six hundred individual confirmation stamps on it.

  Play.

  Kate’s already nervous of what she’ll see. The image of the woman being dragged back into the hotel is still jigging in her head. The video opens on the set of RDC; it was a live recording. The camera is trained on a chopping board, where a stamped silicone android’s hand is making fast work of a no-tears onion. The knife is made of compressed carbonate. It’s easy to see how sharp it is by how little resistance the genetically modified onion offers. Kate has seen the knife’s ads: Extremely sharp: Not recommended for human use. The camera tilts up to show the chef: a smooth-faced femmebot with a toothy smile, who’s not even looking down while the knife dices the onion at supersonic speed. The human host is looking at his watch and laughing as the bot tips the minced onion into a bowl and starts on a new one. He tells her to go faster, and beams some more. Usually Kate would snark at the brainlessness of it all, but for now her heart is pumping hot blood throughout her body. Her breath is shallow, and her fingertips tingle with adrenaline. The bot is smiling widely at the camera, her knifework a blur. The host grins and says something Kate can’t hear over her nerves. She knows exactly what’s going to happen. Does she have to watch it till the end if she already knows the conclusion? As she considers switching it off, the smiling android starts chopping her hand. The stamped silicone of her skin is lacerated to show titanium bones and latex tendons working underneath.

  Keke hisses, an inhalation of cold breath through teeth.

  The host’s cheery face fades as he realises what’s happening, and he blinks and automatically reaches to stop the robot from hurting herself further. Kate wraps her fingers over her eyes and peeps through. The chef tosses the knife a few inches into the air and catches it again at a different angle—so that she can change her grip from chop to stab—and without turning away from the camera or shrinking her smile, in a breathtakingly fluid motion, she drives the knife straight into the host’s chest.

  Chapter 6

  You Should Always Be Worried

  “I don’t understand what’s happening,” says Kate. A moment ago she was on the balcony with her best friend, soaking up whisk
y and sunshine, and joking about Doomsday. Now they stand huddled in the cool apartment, hugging themselves and grasping for words as clip after clip flashes in on their vision. They were fire, and now they are ash.

  Stop thinks Kate, and the news freezes. Clear.

  She looks around the apartment as if she doesn’t know where she is. Where the kids are. The real world punches her in the gut. “Where’s Mally?”

  “In his room. Resting,” says Seth.

  “With Vega?”

  “Vega went out to replenish her medikit. Said she’d stay at her hostel tonight. Make sure Mally gets a good night’s sleep.”

  “And Silver?”

  “She’s not answering my bullets.”

  “Well, that’s normal.”

  “Should we be worried?” asks Kate.

  Seth is deadpan. “We’re parents. We should always be worried.”

  Keke chips in, “You’re a human. You should always be worried.”

  Kate tries to stay calm. “At least we know where she is. Where she always is. It’s the one upside of having a daughter addicted to immersia.”

  Chapter 7

  Not Kids Like You

  SkinTech Clinic

  Johannesburg, 2036

  “There’s a kid here,” transmits the man with dragon scales for eyes. “Says she has a slot booked.” He listens to the feedback then looks at Silver’s hair. “Ja. Looks funny on a kid.”

  Despite the variety of artificial dyes and powders and shifting shades out there, creeps find her white hair unsettling.

  “If you say so, Boss.” Screeching metal on metal as the deadbolt is drawn aside; Silver is allowed access and the man locks the door behind her. They spend a moment eyeing each other. He’s younger than he first appeared, head to toe in black, has a jaw-tattoo that incorporates his designer mandible, and kohl smudge on his eyes. He runs a metal detector over her shoulders, her back, her thighs. The machine beeps when it glides over her jacket, which is full of studs and steampunk corsetry. Hollow buttons and copper darts. They do it again without the jacket, and she’s given the all clear.

  He seems disconcerted by her, won’t stop looking. She stands up to his gaze. “I take it you don’t get a lot of kids coming around here.”

  “Oh, we get kids,” he says. He means street urchins and child prostitutes, white lobster orphans. A city like this swallows kids whole. “But not kids like you.”

  Silver moves quickly through the lifi-lit passage, and when she gets to the end she turns into a large waiting room. The creeps sitting in their swingchairs instinctively look up at her. She’s used to people staring. She glares back, and they look away. Keke says people stare because of the way Silver dresses. She means it in a good way. Silver’s uniform of her bespoke steampunk hooded coat, rubber peelboots, fake-snake leggings—and of course her white hair and heritage gas-mask—is guaranteed to make even the most indifferent stranger take a second look.

  Silver counts five patients in front of her. If they all take an hour each she’ll never get home in time. It takes so long to get to this side of town, it’ll be a shame to turn around and go back again. She’s been saving for ages, and it’s near damn impossible to get an appointment. Plus, she has her heart set on getting this done before Saturday.

  A woman dressed like a Halloween nurse flutters into the room and nods wordlessly at Silver.

  The painfully thin man next to her starts chewing his teeth, shaking his head in small, hard tics. A woman wearing a cybercap and cradling a fox in a shawl gazes blankly at the floor. Silver hesitates. Does she really want to go through with this? She follows the nurse.

  The doctor stands up from behind his desk and opens his arms.

  “Silver,” he says warmly. His voice is exactly as she remembers it—a panther, a vibrating sports car engine.

  “DarkDoc.” She disappears into his arms for a moment. It feels good.

  When they separate, the doctor lifts her hand as if to kiss it, but instead he raises it to his eye level and inspects her artificial finger.

  “How is it? Giving you any trouble?”

  Silver shakes her head. “No. No. Your craftsmanship has stood the test of time.”

  Morgan smiles and gestures for her to sit. The steel clips in his dreadlox glint in the light.

  “Glad to hear it, but then to what do I owe this auspicious occasion?”

  “It’s my sixteenth birthday on Saturday.”

  “So it is! Happy birthday.”

  “I’m here to buy myself a birthday present.”

  “Well.” He clasps his hands together. “You have my full attention.”

  “I’m stuck on the sixth level in Eden 7.0.”

  The techdoctor frowns at her. “You’re not supposed to be anywhere near that game. It’s for adults only.”

  “I know.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “How do you think?”

  “I’m assuming it would have involved hacking, and the best hacker in the country just happens to be your godfather.”

  “Exactly.”

  “He shouldn’t have done that. There’s a reason they don’t let kids play that game.”

  Silver sighs. She’s mature enough. The Net knows she’s shrewder than most of the adults with whom she comes into contact. The rules aren’t for everyone: The DarkDoc should know.

  “Anyway,” he says, “you can’t access the seventh level. You know that. Not without—”

  Silver blinks at him. “So then you know why I’m here.”

  Morgan laughs, and spins the brushed metal levitating sphere on his desk. “You know I can’t do that for you.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re underage, for one. You’re only allowed neural lace when you turn eighteen.”

  “Sixteen, if you have your guardian’s permission.”

  Since when does the DarkDoc care about the rule of law?

  “And … do you have it? Kate’s permission?”

  “No,” says Silver. “Obviously. But she’s a technosaur. The law should make allowances for that.”

  He chuckles. “You do have a point.”

  “Please,” Silver says. “Please, Doc. I have the Blox.”

  He doesn’t need to know how she got the bank in the first place.

  “How can I say no to my favourite kid in the world?”

  A spear of excitement runs through her body. “You’ll do it?”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Oh, thank you!”

  “Not so fast,” he says. “I’ll make you a deal.”

  “I’ll do anything,” Silver says. “Anything.”

  “Come back when you’re sixteen.”

  “But I am practically sixteen!”

  “And bring your mother.”

  “But we’ve already said—she’ll never agree to it!”

  “Then you have some convincing to do.”

  Disappointment flows through her veins like cold ink.

  “Ah, to be so young,” he panther-purrs. “So impatient.”

  Damn it. Damn him. Damn everything. Silver’s so disappointed she feels like crying. She stands up, ready to leave, her gas-mask dangling by her side.

  “Chin up, Silver. I’ll chat to her tonight. I’ll help you to get her on board. I’ll even book the operating room for tomorrow morning.”

  It’s no use, thinks Silver. Kate will never sign the consent.

  Morgan pushes a button, and a few seconds later there’s a knock at the door. It’s the man who let her into the clinic.

  “Boss?”

  “I’d like you to put this young lady into a cabbie, please, as we discussed earlier.”

  “I can do that myself,” says Silver.

  And I’m no lady.

  “My treat,” the DarkDoc says. “And this way you’ll have company.”

  Silver looks at the time on her holodash. 20:00. She’ll make it just in time for her curfew if she leaves now.

  “You know where to take her?”
asks Doctor Morgan.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The door automatically closes behind Silver, and Morgan leans back against his swivel chair, puts his hands behind his head and thinks for a moment.

  Beam Kate Lovell.

  It rings three times, and then he hears her voice. Tense. The sound of her saying his name makes his thighs feel warm.

  “Kate. Are you okay?”

  “Define what you mean by ‘okay’.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Silver was just here.”

  A moment of shocked silence.

  “What? Where?”

  “Here, at the clinic.”

  “But … she’s supposed to be the at the Atrium. She’s always at the Atrium.”

  “I’ve put her in a SkinTech cab with one of my most trusted assistants. You’ll see her soon.”

  “Have you been watching the newstream?”

  There’s a knock at the door. The nurse points at her wrist.

  “I’ve had back-to-back appointments. Speaking of which, I need to go.”

  “You’d better have a look.” She says. “And thank you … for sending Silver home.”

  “Sure. We still need to talk about her. About why she was here. I’ll call you when I punch out.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Oh, and Kate—”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t know why I got this feeling … but … I think she knows about us.”

  Chapter 8

  Milk&Silk

  Seth’s Apartment

  Johannesburg, 2036