Escapology (16 page)

The monocle drops, swinging jauntily on its ribbon. The woman offers a small smile. Amiga sees bewilderment in it. And curiosity. And the real clicker… relief. What’s all that about then?

“Okay. I’m Maggie. Who is it you need to find?”

“Agen-Z.”

Maggie flinches, so subtly that anyone not skilled in reading body language would miss it, or misinterpret what they saw as no more than a twitch. She knows where Agen-Z is, that much is obvious, but Amiga doesn’t hold her breath. There’s something deep going on here. She’s crashed quite the paranoia party.

“Look,” she says, cutting her losses before they become terminal. “My friend’s a Patient Zero. And he’s ill. Verge of death shit from the look. She’ll know what’s wrong and how to help him, if he can be helped. I presume you saw he’s J-Hack? He’s no danger to you. I’m not.”

Maggie’s unmoved. “There are problems around helping you that you don’t fully appreciate.”

Amiga tries again, though she’s pretty sure she’s on a hiding to nothing but EVaC’s RIP.

“I see that. So maybe an exchange of help? We’re good for it. The crew I’m involved with, the Hornets, we’ve been doing work for Fellows…”

She trails off as the temperature changes, cold to hot in a flat second. Maggie was stone, now she’s engaged. Snared.
Involved
. Grabbing Amiga’s arm, Maggie ferries her through the throngs of sartorial elite to a small, red door at the back of the club. She waves her hand as they approach and the subliminal click of the door unlocking is like an itch in Amiga’s drive, unreachable and aggravating. Hefty security here. More than required to be sure. Yeah, Maggie and Mollie are in trouble all right.

Maggie shoves Amiga through and follows her, closing the door behind them. Then rounds on her.

“You’re working for Fellows?”

“Yes.”

“That’s impossible,” Maggie snaps. “You can’t be.”

Amiga’s amused. “Why? Fellows is signal dark and all, but it doesn’t mean he’s not working with anyone.”

“Fellows is
dead.
”

This is not what Amiga was expecting to hear.

“You what now?”

“He went signal dead months ago. Drive dark, you understand?” Maggie grabs Amiga’s arm. “What exactly is it that you’re doing for Fellows?”

Still a little nonplussed, Amiga replies unsteadily, “We caught a sec-drone, and I stole something from my boss, Twist Calhoun. A package. All I know is that the package went on our drone and several others to a specific location, to ‘Volk’, whoever the hell that is.”

Maggie falls back against the wall.

“Holy hell, he’s sent for Volk,” she breathes out. “He’s alive. And you have means of contact, yes?”

“Of course.”

“Then you just got lucky,” Maggie says.

Oh now. Amiga’s radar goes into overdrive. This is interesting. This is most interesting.

“You need to contact Fellows?”

“Not Fellows. Like I said, he’s dead.”

“So who is it we’re working for?”

“Breaker.”

Fucking hell. Amiga’s face goes numb. Breaker.
Shit
. What in hell have the Hornets gotten themselves involved in?

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. He’s been missing, presumed dead. We couldn’t find his signal or safely travel to old safe houses to look deeper. Now I find he’s not just alive, he’s still
active
, still fighting. You have no idea…” Struggling with emotion, Maggie presses a hand against her chest, catches her breath. “Come with me,” she tells Amiga.

Maggie leads her to two steel doors. They slide open to reveal an elevator. And all the buttons go down. Maggie enters as if it’s nothing at all, no big deal. Refusing to follow, Amiga stares open mouthed.

“You dug into the earth?” she says incredulously. “Are you
crazy
?”

Maggie pulls Amiga into the lift, ignoring her protests, and presses the basement button. The doors shut soundlessly, trapping them in a tiny, vulnerable box heading deep into the ground. Amiga stands dead centre, legs locked, knees trembling. She can’t breathe, there are fragile walls closing in around her, and beyond them… all of the earth, ready to crack apart and fold in on her. When it comes to the breaking, the official story is that the earth’s crust became unstable, suffered massive quakes, and broke into pieces.

Logically Amiga knows this isn’t entirely true. Rumours of Corp involvement sprung up centuries ago—a much more logical explanation of the devastation of broken continents spiking the ocean than any natural disaster. If the earth broke itself so completely, so catastrophically, why is the Gung still stable? Why the land ships? How did they know when to build hubs? How they’d have enough time? It makes no sense. Her mind knows this, but her body’s thrown logic to the wind. Run headlong into panic.

“Breathe, girl,” Maggie says softly, without looking round at her. “You’re J-Hack, you know what’s truth and what isn’t. This is truth. It is safe.”

“I know,” Amiga mutters through teeth clenched so hard her jaw is shaking. “I just don’t want to be down here. If this thing triggers an earthquake, I’m going to fucking kill you.”

Maggie chuckles. “You have no idea how amusing that is,” she says.

Amiga has no response, all she can think of are those jagged continental teeth, and how it was they were hidden before the earth was broken. How the earth might reasonably be considered to be angry. Hungry.

The lift stops with a jolt, shaking them both so hard they struggle to remain on their feet. Amiga shrieks, flailing her arms out to the walls, and then screams as it drops suddenly, more swiftly than before, the whir of whatever machinery drives it letting out an unending high-pitched whine. Amiga finds herself humming along with it, at the end of her control, about ready to flip into major hysterics. Maggie lays a hand on her back, between the shoulder blades.

“Keep breathing, hon. We’re not done yet. You want to see Agen-Z, you come this way. No other way to come. This goes deep, real deep. It’s old but secure.”

Desperately sucking air, Amiga chokes out an incredulous laugh, says, “You gotta be shittin’ me.”

“Not even. C’mon, take my arm. You wait. You’re going to feel a bit weird about all this huffing and puffing in a moment. Then you’re probably going to get angry. Hold on to that. Remember it.”

The next time the lift stops, the transition is so smooth Amiga only knows it by the cessation of the mechanical shrieking. The doors slide open onto darkness.

“Out you go,” says Maggie.

The first step out raises lights. They flicker into life throughout a gigantic, circular chamber. Skinned in metal, it glints with a complex maze of circuitry like an optical illusion, the eye pulled from junction to junction, dizzying. Rising from the floor to the roof of the chamber is a huge flared central tower bristling with Tech only Deuce would be able to name. She closes her eyes. Maggie’s right. She’s angry.

“Is this Fulcrum’s? Is it older than the Gung?”

“Yes. And no.”

“How do you have access?”

“We found it. Searched for it. We knew there must be a way to it from one of these old buildings, so we kept scanning till we found the right one, and then we bought this place. Turned it into Mollie’s. Came here to hide when things started to get dodgy.”

Amiga turns to stare at Maggie.

“Is this the only server?”

“No. There are dozens.”

“Shit.”

“Mollie and I needed to hijack a server to monitor the Queens. This one was situated perfectly.”

“
Hijack
?” Amiga’s gaping now.

Maggie’s matter of fact as if this is all cool shizz, right? As if it’s nothing. But Amiga reels, completely off balance. This is not the real world. It’s not. You don’t just hijack a Slip server and not bring down the wrath of both Fulcrum and the Hive Queens, especially if you’re spying on them. Activating their security protocols is bad business. But Maggie’s still talking, cool as anything.

“These servers were built to be self-servicing. Left to their own devices. The only overseers they have are the Hive Queens, and they don’t concern themselves unless one stops working. We keep this working smoothly and they’ll never find us here. Invisible squatter’s rights.”

Amiga has nothing to say. Nothing. Then she does find something to say, though she’s not sure about hearing the answer.

“Fulcrum. Kamilla Lakatos. Was she part of it? I mean I’ve heard things. About the breaking.”

“Ah.” Maggie smiles a little sadly. “You sure you want to know?”

“Not really. Tell me anyway.”

“No need.” Maggie waves her hand at the steel skin. A section slides aside to reveal a clear glass panel. A window. “Go and look.”

Amiga goes to the window. It looks down onto a platform beside a tunnel so huge it defies visual measurement, makes the eyes feel strained and weak. And filling the tunnel beside the platform like some monstrous, incongruous metallic grub, its mouth a collection of saw-toothed, conic grinders, squats a circular device that even to her ignorant eyes can only be one thing.

“Earth engine,” she whispers. Horrified. “It’s true then. They broke the world. They actually broke the fucking world.
Why
?”

“
Don’t think
—Why does anyone do anything?—
iNk! Sal’s Synth Salad! No vegetables here!
”

The voice comes from nowhere, everywhere, buzzing with the digital imprint of a thousand and more trips into the Slip to spread virads.

Agen-Z. Has to be.

Zeros normally have a short shelf life, but this one, the very first, has been going for decades. Amiga wonders how long she’s been listening. How she’s managed to silence the torrent of virad junk spilling from her mouth until now. This connection must be through Slip, with Agen-Z kept quiet by shutting off her end and listening in.

“
Conex
—Expedience—
A lifeline in your hand.
”

Still at the window, Maggie steps forward, raising her hand upward as if to try to stop something. Amiga turns, and sees… an angel. Floating down from the central tower on thin plastic wires filled with the bright glare of neon. Her hair is white, and glows like the moon on a cloudless night, carrying its own ghostly aura.

Incurious yellow eyes, pale as shells, regard Amiga from within youthful, doll-like features accentuated with dots, swirls and cryptically rune-like scrawling resembling black-light tattoos, but that’s not what they are, glowing brightly even in the lights of the server room. Her naked body is covered with more the same. A rainbow of hues, re-making her a neon angel written in indecipherable code. Around the tattoos wires loop through flesh and bone in bloodless intricacy, moving slow and sinuous as sun-drunken snakes.

“I could—
Carrey’s Synth Choc
—tell you everything. The why. The how,” she says to Amiga, her mouth a bright pink bow of light, hypnotic in motion. “I could change your world. But that’s done, I imagine, and,” her head tips, white hair lolling through bright wires, “—
Is it the real thing?
—that’s not why you’re here.
Why wait on wheels?
”

Amiga’s head is spinning. Substrata servers. Earth Engines. Broken worlds. Corp conspiracies. And shining neon angels, suspended on wires.

“EVaC, my friend. He’s sick,” she croaks out. “He… he’s not Guild, nor Affiliate, but he needs help, and only you can help him.”

“
Septo, Dirt Just
—Show me—
Met It’s Maker!
”

Amiga IMs images of EVaC in Agen-Z’s general direction, confident she’ll catch them. Sure enough she does, in an elegant move that would have Deuce writing sonnets. Agen-Z raises her yellow eyes to Maggie, who speaks for her, and Amiga realizes this is how it usually is. Agen-Z, the Mother Zero, has more control than any she’s ever met, but that control prevails only in silence.

“She’ll help,” says Maggie. “But you have to help us first. You have to get a message to Breaker. Deliver it personally. It’s too dangerous for us to try and reach him any other way.”

Amiga stares between them.

“But… what if the line we have no longer goes to him? EVaC will die.”

Maggie holds Agen-Z’s gaze. Nods.

“She won’t let it come to that, you have her word. All Patient Zeros are her family. If he worsens, you’ll have my IM. Use it. Someone will come for him.”

“And what about Breaker?”

“Contact him through the IM you were given. He’ll have alerts even for lines left dormant. We’ll give you something to send. You mustn’t look at it. It has to remain sealed. Any tampering may endanger him. If he’s able, he’ll contact you. I guarantee it.
She
guarantees it.”

“And I have your word she’ll still help EvaC if you’re wrong?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever that’s worth.” Amiga looks between the two of them, slow and measuring, and not a little threatening. “I don’t trust you yet.”

“But you’ll do this?” Maggie asks her.

“For EVaC. Yes.”

This is the sealed package for Breaker.
Is that Maggie or Mollie? Only now, with the voice directly in her IM, does Amiga realize how similar they sound.
When he replies, he’ll have something for us in return. When you have it, IM me, and I’ll tell you where to meet me.
Maggie then.

“Now go,” Maggie says. “We’ll be closing soon.”

“I wasn’t shielded coming in. I could be tracked.”

Maggie turns and offers her a small, tired smile.

“No,” she says softly. “You couldn’t. Looks to me like you need to ask some questions of those closest to you. Someone’s got you under a full signal block. That’s why I was freaked earlier. You’re invisible, hon.”

Sat in a noodle bar on Plaza slurping the last slippery noodles from a bowl of salty miso, bitter against the bump residue coating his throat, Shock nearly drops the lot as the shriek of an IM temporarily shorts every circuit in his brainpan. Whoever’s calling has the loudest chime he’s ever heard in his life. It’s like an air-raid siren, like a million seagulls screaming blue murder over a shoal of tuna, like the thunder of earth spears rubbing together.

Then again, Shock’s in what might be delicately referred to as a fucking state and anything louder than a delicate whisper is guaranteed to work his lobes like jackhammers on asphalt. Choking, he swills the mouthful down with a gulp of Ginger-Apple Tab and accesses.