by Nadia Afifi
“Does it pay well?” Lee asked with interest, gesturing at the equipment.
“Well enough,” Maxine replied, smiling slyly. Her movements were fluid, exaggeratedly feminine, whether for the clients or herself was unclear. “It’s hard to make an honest, safe living through whoring these days, and I can’t say I miss it. You know why that is? It’s those damn robots. They’ve just gotten too good, and the punters have gotten worse in response.”
“The intimacy robots?” Amira asked apprehensively.
“Of course. Robots that play for pay. It’s terrible. You’re competing with a literal fuck machine, so not only can they out screw you, there’s none of the usual mess that comes with a real person. You know, dryness, smells. Do I need to get graphic? Anyway, to make it even worse, the men can do what they like when they dabble with the metal, any violent act they can think of, and the virtual simulations give them all kinds of ideas. The robots can be programmed to act like they love it, or to scream and cry, whatever the client wants. Disgusting. They don’t want human pussy anymore, and when they do, the few remaining working girls don’t want to deal with it.”
When neither Amira nor Lee could manage a response, Maxine let the silence settle in the air before continuing.
“What I’ve finally learned is that you can’t compete with the ’bots, at least not on their level. Most of my income is through my programming these days. My few remaining clients are more interested in the pillow talk than the sex, spilling out their sad little hearts or unloading their day on someone who’ll listen at the hourly rate. They can’t program a woman’s mind yet in those ’bots, our subtleties, the secrets we carry in our smiles. We’ve still got tricks you can’t mimic in a machine, believe me.”
Lee had inched back at least a foot away during Maxine’s speech, as though he were attempting to dissolve into the corner wall.
“So one of your clients is Elder William Young, correct?” Amira asked hurriedly. Lee’s expression mirrored Amira’s disgust, although Amira shared none of his confusion about Elder Young seeking company on the Satyr Road. Amira had experienced enough life to know the positive correlation between the zealous and the hypocritical.
Maxine’s eyes, blazing in indignation seconds ago, hardened as they met Amira’s. She cradled the burning cigarette between two fingers, scattering a trail of ashes onto the floor. “Yeah, he’s one of mine,” she said. “The holy man himself, sent me out crying into the desert. Called me an abomination against nature. But seems he likes a little abomination on the side, when his flock isn’t looking. It’s satisfying, in a way. He thinks he’s using me, when I’m feeding everything he mutters in his sleep to Hadrian. How is dear Hadrian, by the way?”
“Same,” Lee said neutrally.
“Right. He told me everything. Well, the important parts at least.”
Amira nodded. “And?”
Maxine put out her cigarette and rested her chin on her hand, her eyes calm and distant.
“I’ve been thinking since I got word from Hadrian,” she said. “Trying to recall something that might be useful. Most of his rambling is about how important he is back home, how I should read the teachings of Elder Cartwright and other shit you’d expect a raving compound hypocrite to say. But he did mention going up to the stations for the first time in a long time.”
“Did he say which station?”
“No. Wait, yes. The Carthage.”
Alistair Parrish’s station. Amira’s heart fluttered with excitement.
“Notice anything strange in the last few weeks?” Lee asked.
Maxine narrowed her thin brows.
“He did cancel last week,” she said slowly. “And then he rescheduled his appointment last night to today. Nothing that weird about it on its own, until you put together what happened at Aldwych last night.”
Amira nodded grimly. Had it really only been twenty-four hours since the attack? The time since Rozene disappeared felt both far too quick and agonizingly prolonged.
“So he’s coming tonight?” Lee asked, glancing furtively at the long table of equipment behind Maxine.
“In about half an hour,” Maxine replied. “I see that look on your face, Lee, but don’t get too brave. He never comes alone. There’ll be guards outside, armed with the best magnetic guns that Westport connections can buy. But I think there’s a way I can help you.”
She pulled herself off the chair with an effort, sighing softly, and knelt to open a small cabinet below her work bench.
“This has been a little project of mine,” she said, rummaging through the cabinet. “It’s not perfected yet, but you’d make an excellent guinea pig. And if it does work, this should help you quite a bit.” She emerged holding a small case, which she presented to Amira.
“Take out your Eye,” she said.
“I don’t wear one.” Amira winced, eyeing the case with new suspicion.
“You don’t? Oh, you are a real compound girl! I didn’t care for them myself when I first got here – too much mental clutter, right? Then I saw what you could do with them – put this on.”
“What’s so special about this Eye?” Lee asked as Amira cautiously balanced the lens on her fingertips.
“First, it can bypass the Ocular Registry – you know, which identifies who’s wearing the Eye by scanning your eyeball – so you can override it with another person’s ocular print.”
“Meaning I could wear the Eye and pass off as someone else?” Amira asked.
“Exactly.”
“That’s nothing special,” Lee interjected. “You can get fake ID Eyes from lots of places. It’s a common black-market thing.”
“True,” Maxine said. “But that’s not all. If it works, it’ll also scramble the security override that keeps ordinary Eyes from operating in certain places where they’re blocked to commoners like you and me.”
“Meaning Aldwych,” Amira said slowly. Entering Aldwych with every scanner greeting her as William Young meant unprecedented access.
“Not just Aldwych,” Lee said. “NASH, the space stations, government zones. So she’d be able to hit the Stream in those places?”
“The Stream, and the local quantum servers that connect to it,” Maxine said proudly. “It’s those powerful servers in Aldwych and NASH that shut your Eye down in the first place. But my Eye can fake a quantum data stream, so the systems see what they think is a friendly device, part of their own architecture, and the disabler doesn’t activate.”
“If it works,” Lee added softly, but he was already gazing with envy at the small lens on Amira’s finger.
“Assuming it works. But if it does, think about it. These Cosmic freaks Hadrian told me about, the police, Aldwych…there’d be no secrets they could hide from you.”
“But we still need to get her into those places,” Lee said. “They have all kinds of security, including facial scanning. Amira’s a fugitive now.”
“Well, I can’t fix all of your problems,” Maxine said with a slight bite in her voice, raising her eyebrows at Lee. “I can’t give you Elder Young’s face, dear, and you wouldn’t want it. But you won’t be able to get to these places without it.”
“What do you want for this?” Amira asked. For the first time, she handled the lens with excitement. The Eye meant limitless access in places where she needed it most.
“It’s yours,” Maxine said.
“I can’t just accept it.”
“You can,” Maxine said firmly. “We need to take care of our own. I grew up on the Trinity, if you didn’t know that, and I haven’t forgotten what they did to me. Not just sending me out to die in the desert. It took me a long time to accept who I am, to love myself. And I knew Jessica and Nina as well, when I lived on Hadrian’s ship. If I can help you do right by them, for all our girls, I will.”
Amira nodded.
The plan was simple in t
heory. When Young arrived for his appointment, the Eye would activate its hacking script to upload his identity. They had to be close for the upload to work, but once it was complete Amira could travel anywhere on Earth or space under the identity of William Young, unaffiliated Aldwych associate.
Amira and Lee would hide behind the partition in the back of Maxine’s apartment while the hack script ran. After, they could exit down the fire escape.
They barely finished finalizing the plan when a loud rapping on the door signaled Elder Young’s arrival. Maxine disappeared behind the curtain and Amira slid in the Eye. She blinked a few times and shuddered at that unpleasant pulling sensation as the Eye activated, a flurry of text and graphics appearing in the right corner of her vision.
Amira reeled, trying to shift her focus to Lee, the room, reality, but the Eye was no less overwhelming than the last time she used one in the park. The screens alone were not the only navigational challenge – Amira could not understand how Westport natives could converse, work and cross busy streets, all while reading whatever their Eyes ran in the corner of their vision.
Elder Young burst through the door and Amira snapped back into focus. She pressed against the wall, fighting back a rush of rage. On her right, Lee peered through the curtain, scowling with unmasked venom. To her relief, a sidebar in the corner of the lens displayed the progress of the download. Maxine’s hack was working.
“Right on time,” Maxine said smoothly.
“Did someone ask you about me?” he asked furiously.
“What are you talking—”
“No games!” he shouted, his voice thick with panic. “Someone followed me here, so I’ll ask you again. Has anyone come by and asked you about me? Said my name? Answer me, whore!”
Amira and Lee exchanged nervous glances.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maxine replied indignantly. “I haven’t seen or heard anything strange. Is it safe for me now? Do I need to get extra security?”
“Never mind,” Young snarled.
Amira peered through a gap in the curtain. Young threw his jacket on the couch and paced the length of the room, the tension visible in his rail-thin frame. He had predictably eschewed his usual compound attire for a very unsanctioned visit to the Satyr.
Maxine slid behind the bar, assembling a cocktail.
In the corner of Amira’s eye, the bar read thirty per cent.
“Can you believe that attack on the Soma yesterday?” she asked casually over her shoulder.
“What?” he asked distractedly. “Oh, yes. A terrible tragedy.”
Amira dug her nails into her palms.
Maxine did not press for further details. She handed him a drink, the color of old aquarium water, garnished with an olive. As Amira watched him down the drink and pour his second, a new burst of fury erupted within her, so strong that even her eyes burned. To see Rozene’s abductor and Dr. Singh’s attacker in person again, after barely escaping from the Soma, was surreal. She fought the urge to burst through the partition and confront him, to grab him by his throat and demand Rozene’s location. Reason kept her in check – if Maxine was right about the armed guards outside, she would become just another stain on the hallway carpet.
The bar reached fifty per cent. Amira’s pulse raced and she shifted her feet back and forth, willing the colored meter to move faster across her eye.
“You need a vacation,” Maxine said wryly, stretching out across the sofa.
Elder Young downed his second drink. For the first time since bursting into the apartment, he scanned her delicate frame.
“Vacation embodies the sin of idleness and I am never idle,” he said in a sermonic tone. “I have important matters to attend to back home. Some unexpected surprises to address.”
Amira’s stomach tightened. What were the ‘unexpected surprises’ Young had to address? Had something happened to Rozene?
The bar read seventy per cent.
Maxine said, “How do you know someone’s following you? You really scared me when you came in here, you know.”
“You’re filled with questions today,” Young said, more with contempt than suspicion. “Not that it concerns you, but a business arrangement of mine was not meeting my needs, and I decided to change the terms. Something my business partners may not take too kindly to. A new fire to put out.”
“Metaphorically speaking.”
“If all goes well,” Young said with renewed menace.
Ninety-five per cent.
“You could call the police if you think it’s serious.”
“I’m tired of talking,” Young said with irritation.
“Right.” Maxine turned on her music, loud enough to drown out all other sounds in the room.
The bar reached one hundred per cent, followed by a greeting across the Eye screen: ‘Welcome, William A. Young’.
She signaled to Lee and they took slow, cautious steps out of the back window, already opened in preparation. The crisp night air filled Amira’s lungs as she stepped carefully down the fire escape. Police sirens wailed in the distance but the surrounding area was quiet.
Above her, Lee grabbed Amira’s arm.
“Do you hear that?” he whispered. The music continued to rattle the tattered curtain inside. Amira shook her head.
Then it happened. The boom! of a door being kicked down. Screams of shock and anger. A loud scuffle.
“What’s going on?”
“Grab the Elder! Take him alive!”
“Stun them! We don’t need corpses.”
The alley’s breeze whipped at the parting curtain, revealing a knot of bodies, armed with fists and weapons. Figures in red uniforms brandished magnetic guns that they resisted firing, and instead grabbed at other men in black robes. Maxine crouched behind the counter. She screamed as a chair crashed into a computer across the room.
The curtain closed, ending the snapshot of a kidnapping in progress. That was Amira’s assessment, in the seconds allowed her. The Cosmics had sent the same crimson fighters who tried to seize her in the prison to capture Elder Young and apparently surprised his guards. The Elder’s guards fought back, and Amira had no desire to stay to confront the winning side.
“Back out the window,” Lee whispered. “Go!”
They scrambled down the fire escape, feet clanging against the metal steps, but there was no time for silence. Lee nudged her from behind and Amira quickened her pace, eager for the first time to return to the well-lit Satyr Road.
They reached the alleyway and ran toward the main drag of the Satyr Road. Amira’s eyes caught sudden movement and she screamed.
Two new figures appeared in front of them, blocking off the main road. The streetlight framed their silhouettes and Amira recognized the taller figure, the sharp tips of hair and gaunt jaw. Reznik, looking as cold and cruel as he did her first day on Pandora. Lee grabbed Amira’s arm and pulled her through a door to their right.
Panting, Amira and Lee stumbled up a flight of stairs, burst through the next door, and emerged in a department store comprised entirely of adult wares. They ran, careening past lurid mannequins, through racks of corsets and leather, pushing startled shoppers aside and knocking over shelves. A crash came behind them. Amira cast a quick glance over her shoulder. The two men raced toward them, Reznik’s piercing eyes trained directly on her. He moved quickly and would easily catch them in an open space.
They crossed the length of the store and sprinted down a ramp into the busy street, weaving through the dense crowds toward the station. Westport train schedule, Amira thought as clearly as she could manage through her panic. A second later, the Eye displayed the train schedule for the nearest station, with the Red line due to arrive in three minutes. She nudged Lee and pointed at the station sign down the street. He nodded.
The entrance to the subway resembled the neck of an hour
glass as crowds filtered inside. Amira and Lee were separated by the sea of bodies, all sweaty arms and cursing faces, and carried down the human current until they passed the bottleneck and broke free, sprinting toward the Red line.
“Welcome back, William,” a voice greeted Amira as they crossed the ticket barrier. As they followed the signs down to the trains, a scuffle erupted behind them.
“Sir, you need a pass!”
“Let me through!”
The train welcomed them with open doors when they reached the tracks. They stood anxiously in the back of the farthest carriage, waiting for the men to burst through the ticket barrier. Across the walkway, the other train departed south.
Reznik and his accomplice charged down the steps. Lee and Amira shifted tensely behind the other standing carriage passengers in hopes of dissolving into the crowd.
Just then, through the sea of faces, Reznik’s eyes found Amira’s. Her ears buzzed again, ringing over the screeching of passing trains. He shouted at his companion.
The men charged at the carriage door. Amira waited helplessly, willing the doors to seal shut as the glass panes glided slowly, far too slowly, and the final call for boarding echoed across the platform.
The last instant, the doors closed.
Reznik’s accomplice crashed against the sealed door, drawing alarmed stares from the other passengers as the train moved north. Its acceleration drowned out the man’s final howl of rage. Reznik stood still, his eyes following Amira through the carriage’s back window, until the train left the station and the ringing in her ears abated.
* * *