Bluescreen

by Dan Wells

  “Hey, Mari,” said Sandro, leaning against the wall at the top of the stairs. His bedroom was next to hers, and he’d apparently been doing homework when he heard the commotion. At sixteen years old he was nearly Mari’s age, and far more studious and organized than she’d ever been; even now, hours after school was over, he was still in his collared shirt and slacks, arms folded like a younger, male version of their mother. “I heard about La Sesenta and the restaurant, but Mom and Dad won’t tell me anything. You were there?”

  Marisa stepped around him, trying to shift Pati to her other side to keep from falling. “Yep. Can’t talk right now—”

  “Are you going to practice Overworld?” asked Pati. “I played a little after school but Mami found out and made me unplug right in the middle of a match because I hadn’t done my homework yet. I was trying the new Force Pulse powerset but I couldn’t launch any robots like you did because every time I get close they kill me so I got a ton of deaths but I launched Keldy off a mountain—”

  “I’m not playing Overworld,” said Mari, looking back firmly at Sandro’s disapproving glare. “I need to call someone, and it’s kind of urgent—”

  “More urgent than what happened today?” asked Sandro. “You shouldn’t even have gone out tonight. Mom’s on some kind of red alert, practically barricading the windows, and Dad’s downstairs calling every other business owner in Mirador trying to figure out what’s going on, and meanwhile you’re off screwing around with your friends like nothing happened.”

  Marisa’s mouth fell open, and she gestured around at the hallway. “I’m right here, at home, literally two feet away from you.”

  “Are you calling a boy?” asked Pati. “Is it the boy you met at school because I looked him up on your school database like you taught me and he’s really cute and he has pretty good grades but there was another one even cuter and I can show you who it is hang on while I look him up.”

  “Gabi didn’t even go to ballet today,” said Sandro. “Dad wouldn’t let her. When she found out you’d already left with your friends she almost blew a fuse—I thought she was going to break a window.”

  Marisa raised her eyebrows. “Gabi got mad?”

  Sandro nodded. “Gabi got mad.”

  “Mier—” Marisa started to swear, caught herself, and looked down at Pati with a wide, fake smile. “—coles. I will do makeup with you on miércoles.”

  “Today is Wednesday!” Pati protested. “Does that mean I have to wait a whole week?”

  “Friday, then,” said Marisa, finally prying the girl’s arms apart and stepping out of the hug. “But only if you let me make this call, because it’s really important.”

  “Fine,” said Pati sullenly, then brightened and ran back down the stairs, her eyes unfocusing slightly as she watched something on her djinni.

  “Tell me what happened today,” said Sandro. With Pati gone the hall was suddenly quiet, and Marisa shook her head.

  “Let me make this call first.”

  “What call could possibly be so important that you—”

  “I’m calling Chuy.”

  Sandro fell silent.

  Marisa leaned in close, keeping her voice low. “He sent me a message about an hour ago. That’s why I came home early.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but it would keep him off her back. “Don’t tell Papi.”

  Sandro hesitated a moment before answering. “Mari, Chuy is dangerous.”

  “He’s our brother.”

  “He’s dangerous,” Sandro insisted. “Whatever’s going on, he’s mixed up in it. Those guys who came in to the restaurant today were his friends: his friends pointed guns at our mother, and now you’re taking his side?”

  “I’m not taking anyone’s side,” said Marisa. “He contacted me, and that means he has something to say, okay? Maybe he can tell us what’s really going on, with La Sesenta and the Maldonados and . . . who knows what else. You want answers? Chuy might have them.”

  Sandro sighed, a resigned, frustrated snarl. “Fine. But be careful.”

  “I promise.”

  “And come talk to me as soon as you’re done.”

  “I will.” Marisa opened her door. “Thanks for warning me about Gabi.”

  Sandro nodded, and Marisa closed her door and locked it behind her. The nulis had been busy: her piles of laundry had been cleaned, sorted, folded, and stacked neatly in her drawers and hung carefully in her closet. The dishes had been taken away, the floor vacuumed, and her desk straightened—which meant she wouldn’t be able to find anything, she realized with a sigh, and some of her smaller computer components might be missing altogether. She made a mental note to look into the nuli programming, to see what she could do to keep them away from her desk, then rolled her eyes and made an actual note in her djinni’s reminder list. She hadn’t used the list in ages, and it was already full of other reminders: old tasks she’d finished weeks ago, and some she’d forgotten completely. She grimaced, and promised to start using the reminder function better, then shook her head and closed the list. She could think about all of that later.

  She opened Chuy’s message, blinked on his ID, and called him.

  It took Chuy nearly thirteen seconds to answer; an eternity for someone with a djinni. His voice was rough but familiar. “Marisa.”

  Not Mari anymore, Marisa thought silently. Have we really grown that far apart? Or is it just because I’m older now? She cleared her throat. “Hey, Chuy.”

  “Thanks for calling,” he said. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry about what happened at Saint Johnny’s today.”

  Marisa exhaled a soft sigh of relief. If that’s all this call was about, it was a load off her mind. She wanted to say It was nothing, don’t worry about it, except that it wasn’t nothing, and the whole family was worried, and she didn’t want to make light of it. She opened her mouth to talk, and realized she didn’t know what to say that didn’t either absolve him of blame or accuse him of being part of it. She grimaced, and skipped the small talk completely.

  “What’s going on?”

  Chuy ignored the question, continuing to apologize—or to protest his innocence. Marisa wasn’t sure which. “If I’d known Calaca was going to the restaurant, I’d have stopped him; you know that.”

  “I know.”

  “This is . . .” His voice slowed, and she could hear him breathing, like he was trying to figure out what to say. “You asked what’s going on, and I don’t know for sure, but I know it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.”

  Marisa closed her eyes. So there was more. “What do you know? Even if you don’t know everything, you’ve got to know more than I do. Calaca said something about the Maldonados not paying off the gang anymore?”

  “That’s the root of it, yeah. Those idiotas Maldonado uses to boss everybody around, about a month ago they just . . . stopped paying us.”

  “The enforcers?”

  “Maldonado’s thugs, yeah. We tried to figure out why the money wasn’t coming, but they just keep saying the same thing: it’s coming soon, be patient, don’t do anything crazy. But it’s been a month, so Calaca and his boys started shaking down some of the places around the neighborhood, just a little here and there, you know? But I didn’t know they were going to you guys, you gotta believe me.”

  “So that’s all it takes?” asked Marisa, feeling her anger rise. “La Sesenta is literally just holding us hostage, and as soon as the money stops you whip out the guns and start robbing old ladies?”

  “I have a family now, Marisa.” His voice was raw and earnest; he was taking this conversation very seriously. “Junior’s almost one year old now, and I gotta feed him something. You know what I mean? I gotta feed Adriana. I don’t like this any more than—”

  “You could get a job,” said Marisa harshly.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  She heard some muffled cursing, and the sound of things being moved.

  “I’m gonna show you something,” he said, and turned on a v
ideo feed. She saw him for the first time in months—shaved bald, his eyebrows pierced, his neck and arms covered with dark black tattoos. He was wearing a sleeveless white T-shirt with a slim silver necklace tucked inside of it; the wall behind him had once been bright blue, but the paint had faded and the plaster was cracking, and there were more than a few stains, either from water or . . . something worse. Chuy swirled his finger, and whatever nuli was taking the video turned slowly around, giving Marisa a full view of the room: a kitchen, barely ten feet wide, with a metal sink and mismatched dishes stacked in a doorless cupboard. Everything was clean, and Adriana had obviously made some efforts to dress it up—a flower-print tablecloth, some photos on the wall, a cross and a rosary dangling forlornly from a hook—but it was small, and old, and falling apart. As the camera turned Marisa caught a brief glimpse down the short hall, seeing Adriana in a threadbare dress; she stepped out of view behind a doorframe when she saw the camera, but her eyes seemed to hang in Marisa’s mind, soft and sad and desperate.

  “This is how we live,” said Chuy, his voice rising slightly. “This is how I’m raising my son, in this tiny little hole our landlord calls an apartment. You think I don’t want more for them? You think I wouldn’t get a job if there was any way to get one? You live in a palace compared to this—you have everything you ever want, and parents who pay for it, and my girlfriend is dressed in rags. So don’t tell me to get a job, because you know there are no jobs for humans in LA anymore, and nowhere else for us to go. Maldonado’s payoffs put food on the table, and now that they’ve stopped we have to get money from somewhere—or we have to remind Maldonado why he pays us. I don’t like it, but that’s the world we live in.”

  “I had no idea,” said Marisa, wincing in sympathy. She put a hand on her own dress, bright and glittery and expensive, and felt a ball of guilt grow heavily in her stomach. Should she offer some clothes to Adriana? Would she be grateful, or offended? Marisa barely knew her, though she was only one year older. They’d gone to school together. “I had no idea,” she said again, and realized that she couldn’t bear not to offer them something, offense or no. “Chuy, you’ve got to let me help you—”

  He refocused the camera on his face. “I didn’t call to ask for charity.”

  “Some food at least,” said Marisa. “I can sneak you the extras from the restaurant, rice and beans at least—”

  “I don’t want your help,” he said fiercely. “I’m not a beggar, and I can earn my own living. That’s not why I called, and that’s not why I showed you where I live. I called to tell you that I’m sorry, and I’ll do everything I can to keep them off you, but this is what you’re up against, okay?” He gestured at the poverty around him. “Sixty other guys, living just like me, with wives and girlfriends and kids of their own, and no way to feed them. You think we’re just diablos out here making trouble for no good reason? We’ve got to do something, whether we like it or not.”

  Marisa saw the pain in his eyes, could hear the regret in his voice, and she felt her fingers curl involuntarily around the sheets on her bed, clutching them with tight, white knuckles. She didn’t want to ask, but she had to. “So . . . what are you doing?”

  “Marisa . . .”

  “You said you’ve got to do something, and I know you’re talking about more than just shaking down some shops and taco stands. I know you, Chuy, and there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  He paused, then nodded. “Goyo started it last week.”

  “Who’s Goyo?”

  “The boss. If you think Calaca’s scary . . .” He paused again, gritting his teeth. “We’re selling, Marisa.”

  Marisa closed her eyes, her worst fears confirmed. “Drugs? Is it Bluescreen?”

  “What’s Bluescreen?”

  “It’s a new digital drug,” she said quickly, “plugs right into your djinni. One of my friends did some tonight.”

  “Here in Mirador?”

  “No, it was . . .” She didn’t want to say Brentwood, feeling too guilty to even mention that she spent time with someone who has a home there. “The other side of town.”

  “Never heard of it,” said Chuy. “Goyo’s got us selling Hoot.”

  “Húluàn?”

  “Exacto.”

  “Chuy—”

  “I know.”

  “Hoot practically eats you alive! Have you seen the pictures? And it’s, like, twice as addictive as normal meth.”

  “I know!” Chuy repeated. “I’m not saying I’m down with this, and that’s why I wanted to warn you. I tried to talk to Calaca, but do you know how much authority I have in La Sesenta? Just barely enough to not get shot when I say that maybe we don’t want to bring flesh-eating heroin into our neighborhood. So now I’m warning you that you need to be careful, and watch the little girls, and . . . be careful.”

  “I will,” said Marisa, “but you’ve got to get out.”

  “I’ve told you, I don’t have anywhere to go.”

  “Go to Mexico,” said Marisa. “They have jobs there—”

  “Mirador is my home,” he said. “I was born here; my son was born here. My family is here—not you and Dad, the family that kicked me out, but La Sesenta, mis carnales, true blood brothers united not by some hereditary accident, but by choice. By pride. I would take a bullet for them, and any one of them would take one from me. We put food on each other’s tables, and money in each other’s pockets, and I’m not going to leave that just because the food isn’t very much and the money doesn’t go very far.”

  “So you’d rather sell Hoot on the playgrounds?”

  “Why are you attacking me? I’m trying to help you.”

  “Then stop dealing drugs.”

  “Damn it, Marisa—”

  “Then come home,” she said.

  He shook his head, looking suddenly exhausted. “You know that’s not an option.”

  “You can patch things up with Papi—he misses you, I know he’d take you back.”

  “You were too young when I left,” he said. “You didn’t understand then, but I thought you’d have figured it out by now. He will never take me back, and I will never take him. I can’t live with him. I can’t be him. I have my own family now, my own woman, my own child, and I have to stand up and be the man they need me to be—if you don’t agree with my methods, that’s your problem and not mine.”

  “Is a little pride worth more than their safety?”

  “Their safety is why I’m here,” he said fiercely. “You think people just leave gangs, as easy as . . . logging out of a game? This is the real world. I swore an oath to Goyo, and to everyone else, and if I break that oath everything I have is in danger.” He laughed—a short, disbelieving bark. “How sheltered are you, Mari?”

  “I love you, Chuy.” She faced one the computers on her desk and turned on the camera feed, wanting him to look her in the eyes. “I love you, and you know that, and I know you love us too. I’m glad you called, and I’m grateful for your help, but . . . for Junior’s sake at least, and for Adriana’s. For Mami’s sake, so she never has to hear about you getting shot somewhere. You’ve got to get out. If not here, then Mexico—they won’t chase you that far.”

  Chuy took a deep breath, and the pause seemed to drag on forever. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I love you, too, Mari. Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  She blinked, and ended the call.

  FIVE

  “Agents missing from the city,” said Sahara on the comlink.

  Marisa scanned the rooftop quickly, with a quick glance at her camera feeds to make sure. She’d brought the recon drones this time. “Nothing up here; they must be in the sewers.”

  “You hear that, Fang?”

  “Kù,” said Fang. “Think I know where they are. Hide in the rubble of that old laundry place, and drop down the hole on my signal.”

  “On it,” said Sahara. Jaya echoed her, and Marisa watched on her map display as t
heir icons moved across the battlefield. This match was in a ruined city, full of collapsed buildings and overturned cars. Marisa was perched on top of a bombed-out gymnasium, working as Spotter to Anja’s Sniper.

  “That leaves us alone for a while,” said Anja. “Want to try something weird?”

  “No, she doesn’t,” said Sahara. “We’re trying to practice for the Jackrabbit, not screw around making blooper reels for some weekender’s gamecast.”

  Anja was already up and running, sprinting across the rooftop as fast as she could move. Marisa smirked and followed her; as Spotter it was her job to keep Anja alive, and even Sahara couldn’t argue with that. “How weird are we talking?”

  “All the key spots to take out the turrets are guarded by attack drones, right? So the normal way to disable them is to kill the drones, move into place, and pour as much damage into the turret as we can before the drones respawn.” She was moving forward as she spoke, headed for one of the standard sniping positions, but stopped a full rooftop short. “Today I brought every range enhancer I could pack in—my DPS sucks, but I can hit from way, way back, where there are no drones. Cover me.”

  Marisa caught up to her just as she started firing; Anja’s avatar today was some kind of fairy princess, pink tutu and all, which looked hilarious crouched on the edge of a rooftop holding a six-foot Arlechino sniper rifle. She folded down her tripod, lined up her shot, and fired. The enemy turret was far down the road, only barely visible from this vantage point, and Marisa didn’t expect any of the Overworld weapons to have that kind of reach . . . but the shot hit.

  “You can attack turrets from all the way back here?”

  “I saw it on a Korean gamecast.” Anja fired again, more rapidly now that she’d set everything up. “It’ll take me twice as long to kill it with these damage values, but I can do it.”

  “Spend that long in one spot and you’re dead,” said Marisa. “The enemy Sniper’s going to know exactly where you are.”

  “Which is why I waited for their whole team to go underground,” said Anja, firing freely. Her shots left bright afterimages in the air: tracers designed to help a Sniper walk their shots, but which an enemy Sniper could just as easily follow back to the source. Marisa crouched low, trying to spot any threats before they could counter.