by Sarah Stone
The building they stopped at was in better shape than most of the crumbling, broken windowed blocks around them, but not by much. It was situated in an odd part of the neighborhood, certainly not what he would call rich, but definitely more upscale than the other parts of the city he had seen. There was a man without a bandana on his face, marking him as a sympathizer perhaps, watching the door, and though Hayden anticipated some sort of conflict, his escort simply said a few words that had the bouncer waving Hayden forward.
“She’ll meet you inside,” the Akiaten said, simply, his voice thick with the Tagalog accent of the indigenous islanders, who despite the radical multicultural transformation of Manila in the post-war era, still outnumbered the various groups of newcomers.
“Thanks for the navigational expertise,” Hayden said, somewhat sarcastically, though he suspected that part of the man’s job had been to make sure he had no clue how to find the place if he changed his mind along the way and by some miracle wasn't killed on the spot.
She, he was thinking as he walked, was most likely Lunatic 8. That would have explained the slightly apprehensive look on the face of his escort. Hayden imagined that even among the other resistance fighters, she had something of a reputation that encompassed both her skill and her strangeness. Either way, an intimidating person to associate with.
In spite of MassNet acting as a filter throughout his own conversation and encounters with her, Hayden had found himself a bit discomfited, and he knew from Nibiru’s manner that she had been too. A slinger who was that far gone, so fundamentally lost to the datascape, would not make for pleasant company in the physical realm.
Hayden had met others who only rarely unplugged. None of them had even a fraction of the talent displayed by Lunatic 8, but each of them had that same to-the-bone exhaustion and frayed personality.
The human body could get pretty worn down and disgusting if it wasn't taken care of, and given her many burdens, Hayden was surprised that the resistance slinger was able to unplug and meet him in person.
His heavy shoes clacking on the metal of the staircase that led to the entrance turned quiet when they met the worn, ripped-in-places, carpeting of the shabby hallway inside. The walls had been painted sometime in the last decade and while he could see the original flooring in more than one place, it was at least sturdy under his feet, which put it a step above most of the places he had visited that were untouched by the wealth of the invading corporations.
With the lack of information he’d been given by his escort, he was even unsure as to whether the building was another of their safe-houses or if it housed civilians in addition to active resistance members. It was as he navigated the hallway that he began to hear the music drifting outward.
There were no footsteps warning him before the door was pulled open smoothly and he only just managed not to leap backward involuntarily.
The floor of the club was concrete and the bass was loud in his ears. The hallway that led to the main room was so narrow as to mimic suffocation. He had no particular aversion to small spaces but feeling both shoulders brush the wall as he rounded the corner wasn’t a soothing sensation in the slightest. He hoped the fire code was up to snuff and that there was another exit somewhere in the main room, though he doubted any such things were of deep concern. He’d been hyper-aware of such things since their disastrous exodus from the original HQ and with his life only becoming more and more dangerous, he had no wish to shake the new habit.
Laine would already have an exit-strategy and a handful of ideas about how to take out everyone in the building by now, but at least he was making an effort.
The door he found had cigar smoke drifting out of it and the smell of booze was strong. He hadn’t been to such a place in god knew how long; probably since he was a kid. He occasionally visited bars in New LA, but he was more about a good drink and an interesting conversation than he was about dancing, which is what most of the clientele here seemed to prioritize.
He'd always preferred the cocktail lounges that served up expensive drinks in the lobbies of expensive hotels before he and his expensive escorts made their way up to his room for the night. This wasn't the high life at all, more of a speakeasy hidden away from the prying eyes of governments and corporations alike, where the locals could do their thing without being bothered by those who considered themselves authority.
There was a large bar with a lot of people hanging or sitting around it, but the bulk of the patrons were on the dance floor, the mass of them writhing to the music almost as one. They looked like waves in the seas, all of them shifting and jerking together.
After thirty or so seconds of staring with his shoulder leaned against the wall by the door, he concluded that this place was certainly not one of the faux-posh New LA places he was used to and began making his way toward the bar. No pretense of politics or class here, just the raw release of dance and drink, and he found himself pleasantly drawn to it.
He could think of no one he might be meeting aside from Lunatic 8, but could not pick her out in the middle of the chaos on the dance floor. He hoped he could find her at the bar, assuming it might be difficult due to the mix of dim lighting and the tide of already drunk patrons blocking his way. They moved aside amiably enough.
A woman with red lips and laughing eyes tried to engage him in conversation, not seeming to mind that he didn’t share her language, but gave up when he smiled apologetically and kept sliding through.
He scanned the faces lined up at the bar, thinking, when he saw no one recognizable, that perhaps Lunatic 8 changed her appearance for the datascape after all. He was just about to step back and try a search of the dance floor when a glass clinked down in front of him, filled with a cloudy liquid that almost seemed to glow in the strobing lights of the venue. Hayden picked it up but hesitated before the glass touched his lips, catching the eye of the bartender with a questioning look.
"It's palm wine, small batch from Siquijor island," said the man, his voice deep and rich, though his smile was openly condescending as if he were speaking with a child, "Worse things to be afraid of here than strong drink, company man."
The bartender lifted his chin to gesture down the bar, indicating a woman who sat in the deepest shadows at the furthest end. Hayden took the hint, picked up his drink and moved around the crowded bar towards her. It was only when he sat down beside her, drink still in hand, that he realized it was no one he’d expected.
It was not Lunatic 8 who looked at him as she brushed the hair away from her face, but Una, whom he’d patched up in the alleyway only to have her attend him in turn.
She looked healthier by miles than when he’d seen her in his dazed state a week prior. She looked even better as he stood in front of her now. There was a shine to her hair and no trace of blood on her skin that he could find. Her lips were curved into an almost smile as she looked him over in turn. Her eyes held the same intensity he recalled from the woman who’d saved his life, who’d vouched for him. She almost seemed to glow in the half-light of the club, as if she was radiating a kind of energy and allure that he felt impossible to resist. As he stood next to the chair beside her the pull of it made him think of the moon being drawn into orbit around the Earth.
“Slinger,” she said. “Good to see you.”
Hayden took a deep pull of his drink, buying himself a moment to think. It wasn't his smoothest moment, but it was all becoming nearly too much.
A cryptic invitation from a fractured slinger, a nightclub rendezvous with the beautiful woman he'd shared so much danger with; this wasn't how real life clandestine missions or revolutionary defections were supposed to go. There was, of course, the possibility that the entire thing was a set-up of the most obvious variety, but he told himself to ignore it. Lunatic 8 had been telling the truth. He wasn’t the best judge of reading people, but she seemed to lack the social skills needed to pull off a lie of that caliber, however skilled she was in the code.
“It’s, uh, Hayden Cole,” he sai
d, offering his hand, and then feeling like an idiot when she spent a good five seconds looking at it without taking it.
“I know who you are. 8 had you profiled as soon as you jacked in and started messing around with our island,” she said, grabbing his hand and giving it a brief shake at last along with a smile. “Drink up Cole, you're among friends if you want to be.”
Una was dressed more casually than many of the club’s dancers and drinkers, her legs encased in skin-tight jeans that ended with black boots, and a loose dark top that showed tantalizing glimpses of skin in all the right places.
Her smile looked half feral, and he found himself tossing back the rest of the drink she’d bought before he sat, a sort of fortification. It felt smooth going down, but he felt the fire in his chest afterward. He didn’t drink often, and it was probably a stupid idea to do it now. His job required him to stay sober enough to work at a moment’s notice and it was dangerous to enter the datascape impaired in any way, especially if the mission was such that you might encounter enemy opposition.
Plenty of slingers abused uppers and even those who used responsibly still only ingested substances that would help them stay sharp and alert, never anything that would dull the senses or slow reaction times. For a slinger worth their jacks the physical world moved slowly enough compared to the datascape as it was, and anything that slowed it down even more was nearly intolerable. He usually made a rule of confining any drinking to days off and time spent on leave in the city both he and the Union’s main headquarters called home. Booze was great for date nights, but that was it, though Hayden knew better than to protest.
He scratched at the back of his neck, fingering his jacks out of nervous habit, trying not to sound as taken aback as he felt. “I was actually expecting Lunatic 8,” he said. “We just talked.”
“She told me,” Una said, then waved a hand at the hectic atmosphere of the club. “This isn’t really her kind of place. On the very rare occasions she leaves her throne, she likes the quiet, needs it actually. This would be too much chaos for her.”
The music shifted to something louder and faster, and several of the bar’s denizens downed their drinks and moved to catch the song before it ended. “But not for you?”
“Not for me.” She sipped at her own drink, something darker than what he had held in his own, in a tall, thin glass. “I like the energy of a good crowd, though I’ll admit I prefer to stay on the fringes.”
He nodded his head at the dance floor, thankful for the small talk, as it gave the palm wine a chance to take the edge off. He kept thinking he saw Laine out there in the press of bodies, could almost feel her breath on the back of his neck before she slid the blade between his vertebrae.
He turned back to Una. She was being graceful, he realized quickly, giving him space to adjust. “So, you don’t dance?”
“Are you asking?” she said, though the words sounded dry of humor.
“No,” he said. “If it doesn’t involve the datascape I’m not exactly what you’d call graceful.”
A look passed between Una and the bartender, and another palm wine found itself beside him. He let his fingers rest against the glass without lifting it to drink, ran a finger around the rim.
“That’s surprising.”
He chuckled. “No. It’s not. If you had actually seen me trying to maneuver my way across that marketplace with my gun and the kid,” he shook his head, a self-depreciating smile crossing his lips. “In the datascape I am my best self, out here I'm just another guy.”
"The way of the code," Una said, and there was the touch of a smile on her own lips now, but she looked as though the expression was an unfamiliar one, and indeed, it didn’t quite look like it fit on her face.
None of us are comfortable in our own skin, thought Hayden as he looked at her, not Laine or Lunatic 8 or Una or myself. Probably not Sun either, he added. Our lives lived in between worlds, be they of death-dealing or data slinging.
Her strange eyes were watching him, his own inverted reflection chastising him from the black. Whether it was an ocular augment or just more Akiaten weirdness, he still couldn’t tell even as he felt nearly lost in them. Even with the darkness and the oddness of her eyes, the absence of color, they were hard to look away from. The dim lights from the roof of the dance floor, a tea light flickering a few feet away on the bar, all of them reflected back, like constellations in the dark.
“So why did you?” he said, pausing to take a sip of his wine, now resolved to get to the heart of the matter. “Bring me in, I mean. Lunatic 8 made a good case about needing a corporate slinger, and I know I’m good, but that still doesn’t explain why you would trust me with your secrets.”
Hayden could scarcely trust himself. He’d thought his conviction was impressive, his unwavering dedication to whatever side paid him. He’d received generous offers to cross over in the past but had always prided himself on holding loyalty over greed. And here he was switching to a side that didn't even offer a paycheck, and that was about as far from hardcore merc as it got.
Apparently, his heart was a dodgy, easily persuaded thing. It had faltered when he saw the little boy in the square and it faltered now when Una looked at him, her gaze and his upside-down reflection pinning him to the barstool.
“I,” Una said, “Trust no one but myself. But I like you because you listen to your spirit when it cries out, which is something the corporations seemed to have augmented away or burned out of most company men and women. You helped 8, and you helped me.” Her head tilted, dark hair shining under the far-off lights.
“I was awake for some of it when you were helping me in the alley. I saw you put your armor around the boy. Maybe that’s the only reason, and maybe it’s not enough, but we’re losing ground in this war every day, in the datascape and on the streets. The hope is that you can change things. We can’t afford to be sure about everything, but that is life, and life is what we are about. Isn't that why you are here? There’s no harm in letting yourself remember you’re still alive, or else there's nothing to fight for anyway.” She looked from his eyes to the dance floor, issuing a silent challenge. “Sometimes, the reward is worth the risk.”
Maybe he didn’t know himself, but he was learning.
Hayden tossed back the rest of his palm wine and stood, Una moving with him to the dance floor.
It was still too crowded for his New LA sensibilities, and sometimes, the bodies that pressed against him were unwanted, but the most reaction he received in response was a warm smile or a slightly awkward chuckle accompanied by a smile. Mostly, the hands he felt on him belonged to Una, and he was glad of it. He would not, by any means, call himself a good dancer, but he let her movements guide his own and felt that he looked much less foolish than he would have on his own.
Maybe it was the wine, or something else. She moved like the floor was a battleground slick with blood, easily avoiding the other dancers, however close they pressed. She was a predator, but not an augmented one like Laine, she was something else, and he could feel her otherness pulsing out of her like waves of alien energy. Her movements were so perfect as to look almost mapped out, but still, seemed natural as they came to her, her thin, victorious smile showing through her eyes when she looked up at him. He didn’t know what he was doing, but somehow, with her, he did.
He was still unsure, not only of his own intentions but of hers as well. He got the feeling that this was only fun, only an affirmation of the connection they had shared since the battlefield, of his newfound place in the resistance. All of this was well and good to him, but he couldn’t help wanting to kiss her when he glanced down at her lips. There was something more to the connection than lust, though he had no clue if that went for her as well. Whatever they felt, he supposed she was right.
There was no harm in taking the time to feel something, to connect, even if it only lasted but a moment.
The dancing went on until his legs were burning, but Una showed no sign of stopping and the sky outside w
as still dark. He went where she led him, back to the bar for one more drink and then down the same narrow hallway he’d entered through. She looked back at him as he followed, her grin feral, and he felt like prey being led to the wolf’s den. The door she led him to was part of the same building, just circling around a gravel path out back, up a metal staircase as tight as the hallway had been.
There was a line of doors on each side of the fifth-floor hallway. The walls were cheap wood paneling, peeling away in several places and it did not match the mood of the building. He’d been expecting grimy concrete. The doors looked just as flimsy, as though a swift kick would cave one in.
Una led him to one marked nineteen, metal painted with chipped gold and opened it with a key she pulled from nowhere. It was rare that he saw actual keys instead of all-purpose cards, but he supposed it was to be expected for this neighborhood. The door was totally analog and thus completely slinger-proof, and in Una’s line of work, that could only be a good thing.
She stepped back and gestured for him to go inside, and he moved forward, sliding past her and into what seemed to be an almost painfully small apartment, better suited to being called a motel room than anything else.
With his back to her, away from her ensnaring gaze, his mind considered briefly that this could still be a set-up to get him drunk and then interrogate him, maybe threaten to tear out his jacks unless he gave up critical information. Once inside, her shutting the door behind him, he felt a sliver of doubt worm its way into his mind. In the club, there’d been an exit should he need one, and an extra at the other end of the dance floor. But now, he’d trapped himself in close quarters with a woman who a few days ago had been his enemy. Despite the relative civility with which each of them had treated the other, it was difficult to ignore his mind’s urge to panic at the thought that he might be penned in.
But then Una was touching him again, her hands at his shoulders and his back against the wall. She felt invulnerable, arms like a fortress around his middle, her lips sucking bruises into the skin of his neck.