Firebreak

by Nicole Kornher-Stace

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” says the suit at the table.

  I wasn’t talking to you, I think, and swallow another nervous laugh.

  “This will be simpler for all of us if you cooperate.”

  “Oh good.” I’m rapidly passing into the overwrought-babbling phase of things, I note. “That was definitely my top concern here. Simplicity.”

  “Who hired you to incite the riot on the sixth of April?”

  This does wonders to clear my head. Anticorporate agitation is a terrorism charge, even heavier than water poaching. If they can land that on me, I’m done. “I didn’t incite any riot. I called for a legal, peaceful protest. It hasn’t even happened yet. What happened on April sixth was that we were attacked.”

  “There is extensive surveillance footage that puts you in the middle of the riot of the sixth of April. It began as you exited the hotel, and followed directly on the heels of a little speech posted online from inside the building.” Suit guy holds a fist out and opens it. A holoscreen projection floats up from the implant in his palm. There’s my face, wearing the stupid dazed expression I get when there’s too much shit going on around me and it jams the signals from my brain. In the video, Keisha is walking backward down the stairs, declaiming, That puppet shit you saw? Remember whose channel you saw that on! Are you really going to believe the same people who cut off our water?

  “Yeah,” I say. “They were thirsty. It was raining. It wasn’t any riot. Their water had been cut off, which by the way none of them deserved. They were trying to keep their fucking kidneys from failing.”

  “Prior to this you had been posting inflammatory videos defaming Stellaxis Innovations. Videos that serve no conceivable purpose but to foment paranoia and unrest. You were caught on camera entering Stellaxis Innovations HQ on the evening of the fourteenth of March in the company of SecOps operatives 06 and 22. I’ll ask again. Who hired you?”

  “Stellaxis Innovations HQ, by which you mean where we are right now?”

  I hoped to unbalance him, but suit guy just smiles blandly. “I’m asking the questions today, Ms. Parker.”

  “So go ask 06 and 22. I was helping them escort some refugees to the hospital. They’ll corroborate my story.”

  “You did not bring refugees to the hospital. You brought them to Stellaxis HQ.”

  “Because the hospital wouldn’t let—”

  “Where you took footage of company property—private property, Ms. Parker—and shared it publicly. Do I need to spell out how illegal that is?”

  Something flickered across his face when I told him to ask 06 and 22. Annoyance? I decide to test this. I arrange my body language into the best possible analogue of stubbornly folded arms that I can manage with my arms, well, restrained. “Like I said. Don’t believe me? Ask 06 and 22.”

  There it is again. He’s burying his reaction admirably, but something about what I said is visibly pissing him off.

  I walk it back a little, see if I can gain some breathing space. If I can put this jackass more at ease, I might be able to get him talking. More than this anyway.

  “I’m sorry,” I make myself say. “I make my living streaming live broadcasts of video games. I guess recording is a habit. I started taking video that day so I could show my friend, and then that mech started attacking and I was running with all those people and there was all this screaming…” I trail off, let myself go glassy-eyed. I’ve seen some shit, I try to project at him. I was not my absolute best self that day. “They said we were going to the hospital, but the hospital was full. Then they asked me to keep walking, so I kept walking. I was so tired. We were all so, so tired. It’s so second nature, what with my job and all, I guess I just… forgot to stop recording.”

  “You forgot,” suit guy says, and his tone is the tone Jessa gives me when I say I forgot to unmute the subscriber audience on a stream.

  I try to shrug helplessly. On several levels, this proves difficult.

  He looks at me. I look back at him.

  “SecOps operatives 06 and 22 were providing an escort to wounded civilians,” he says. “A situation of which you took advantage. What you are here to tell me is what you were doing there in the first place.”

  “Like I said in one of the videos you just said you knew about, I took a bus to the city to go to the coffee shop. Which is now gone. I was understandably a little confused to see the place had been completely erased, so I took a walk to think. I ran into some fighting. You saw the rest.”

  “And you were going to the coffee shop to meet with this woman, I believe?”

  The holoscreen shows a mug shot of B. Her hair is different in it. It’s not a new picture. Possibly from when she was arrested on her water terrorism charge?

  “Yeah.”

  “For what reason?”

  “It’s in the video.”

  “Indulge me.”

  “She hired me. Payment never came through. I couldn’t get hold of her online. I didn’t want to keep working for free, so I went looking for her.”

  “I wonder how you thought you’d get hold of her online,” suit guy says. “She was serving a five-year penalty. Her lenses were inoperable.”

  “Her sister set up the one meeting we had. But you know that. She disappeared too.”

  “Is this who you mean?”

  Photo of a woman. If it’s the same one I caught a glimpse of behind the coffee shop counter, I’m not sure.

  This one’s not a mug shot. She’s dead.

  The fact that I’ve just apologized to this smug fuck, whether or not I meant it, is burning in the back of my throat like bile. I just stop myself from asking what happened to B’s sister. I know what happened to her. She had an accident. She tripped and fell onto some company bullets.

  “I’ll ask again,” suit guy says. “Who hired you to record footage of the interior of the Stellaxis building?”

  “Nobody.” My voice cracks. “I told you. It was my idea.”

  “No, Ms. Parker,” he says gently. “You told me you forgot.”

  “I meant it was my idea to record initially,” I say. Struggling to sound calm. Like a person who hasn’t just been caught out contradicting her own story. B’s sister’s dead face stares out of the holoscreen at me. Of course he hasn’t taken the photo down. I wonder if there’s another photo he’s waiting to show me, this one of Jessa. I push the thought away. “In the street. With the mech. Then when we got to Stellaxis HQ, I guess I just—”

  “Forgot? Yes, you said.”

  “There was kind of a lot going on. You have to understand. I come from old town. Not the city. Where I live, mechs trashing buildings in the street isn’t exactly an everyday occurrence. It scared the shit out of me.”

  “Did it?” Suit guy’s brow furrows. Up comes a clip from my second video. He gestures at it with his other hand until it gets to the part he’s after.

  There’s the front-desk guard at the company building, looking at our wounded-civilian crowd suspiciously. “They’re not recording?”

  And 06 telegraphs massive annoyance and shouts, “Do these people look like they’re recording?” I glance down fast to hide the fact that I absolutely am, so we just get 06’s voice for the rest, overlaid over the image of the tiled lobby floor and the tops of my sneakers. “Well?”

  The holoscreen freezes.

  “She didn’t know,” I say. “She never asked me if I was.”

  Even leaving my mouth it sounds unlikely, though at least the second part is technically true. Still, it doesn’t explain 22. There he is in the playback, faster even than my downswept gaze, having moved ever so subtly to block me from clear view while 06 keeps the guard’s attention on her.

  Suit guy says nothing, just gestures at the video to replay those last couple of seconds. It’s unmistakable. I looked down to hide my uninjured eyes from the guard. The only eyes in that crowd apart from 06’s and 22’s that could possibly be recording. But that’s not the worst of it.

  22 is not given t
o aimless fidgeting. His movements are calculated, meticulous, efficient, precise. And he moved to cover me, and suit guy has the footage to prove it.

  Footage that I took.

  Fuck.

  Suit guy eyes me. Maybe he’s waiting for me to sell out 06 and 22, like I haven’t already accidentally done that by posting the second video. As far as I’m concerned, he can wait until the heat death of the goddamn universe. They covered for me. Least I can do is return the favor.

  “Do by all means take your time, Ms. Parker,” suit guy says. “Sometimes in a stressful situation such as you describe, it takes some while for the details to return fully to memory. I understand completely. Please do not rush to force recall on my account. You will find over the coming days that I am in no hurry at all.”

  He unfolds to his feet and crosses the room to the door. It’s all I can do to keep myself from saying No, stop, don’t leave me here, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.

  And then that window of opportunity closes too.

  * * *

  TIME PASSES. I’M not sure how much. The lights are always on. Always the same brightness. No windows on the outside world. Suit guy’s presence gave shape to my fear, transformed it into something that felt more like anger. Anger at least is a motivator. Now he’s gone, and it’s just the drip of the IV and the faintly audible buzz as one of the lights in the ceiling slowly dies. The chair digs into my back. I desperately have to pee.

  I try not to think of Jessa and the others. Of 06 and 22. If I’m in trouble here, where are they? I can’t really picture what trouble would look like for them. I can’t imagine them cuffed to chairs in interrogation rooms. What’s suit guy even trying to get me to say? Greenleaf Industries hired me to, what? Post intel on Stellaxis HQ to the entire internet? Wouldn’t I just, like, sell the footage to the Greenleaf newscasts if I actually stood to gain?

  Only in my head, probably, does the truth make more sense. Somehow I doubt the whole the object of my lifelong fangirl friendcrush trusted me to do something, I had to at least try angle is going to play well to this crowd.

  For a while I expect some muscle to show up and torture me until I talk. I think of the screams I heard coming out of the interrogation pod by the checkpoint, and cold sweat runs down my back. But nobody appears.

  The idea strikes me that they don’t want to torture me in a way that leaves visible marks. They could kick the shit out of me right here, just like they could kill me when they’re done with me, but that would look too much like martyrdom.

  For now, at least, they must be planning to let me go.

  Eventually.

  Maybe.

  I keep trying to check the time on my lenses. But my lenses don’t work. They’re still there, still in my eyes, they just don’t interface. I’m still locked out. It’s almost funny how little sense of time I have without them. Or maybe it’s this room fucking with me. Days and nights could pass, and the light wouldn’t change.

  After an interval a doctor-looking person comes in to check on me. White coat, handheld screen, syringes. They could have sent a medbot. I guess they want me to know how seriously they’re taking my residency here.

  She changes out the bag on my drip. “Fluids,” she explains. “You were dehydrated.”

  No shit.

  Takes my vitals. Does something to whatever’s wrong with my face. She peels something away that I can’t see—smart bandages, at a guess—and the air-conditioning hits my exposed skin like a blowtorch.

  I’m tempted to ask for a mirror. Then I think better of it. I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of refusing my requests. Or of seeing the expression on my face when I see how bad the damage is.

  “Do you need anything?” she asks, once she’s replaced the smart bandages. A lot of smart bandages, from the look of the pile of wrappers on the table.

  Get me out of this fucking chair for starters, I’m tempted to reply, but very soon I’m going to have to choose between swallowing my pride and pissing on the floor. “I need to use the bathroom.”

  She produces a bedpan. Not happening, I want to say. Instead I shut my eyes and nod.

  The doctor comes back later to disconnect the IV. Takes a few vials of blood. Sticks me with a syringe of something. I don’t ask, and she doesn’t say. Then she leaves.

  Pain meds. There were pain meds in the syringe. Probably. I’m not asking them that, either. But whatever it is, it’s not enough. It barely takes the edge off. I’ve got bruises on bruises, and every muscle in my body is sore from fighting to keep my footing in that crowd. But the worst of it is where I was crushed against the shield. The side of my face and neck, the arm I tried and failed to wedge in between and push off the shield, that shoulder and hand, all feel like someone’s pressing them to a stove top and gradually turning up the heat one degree at a time.

  No. The pain meds weren’t in the syringe. They were in the IV. And now it’s gone.

  They’re trying to grind me down. Well, fuck them.

  Slowly, agonizingly, one millimeter at a time, against the restraints and the pain and the voice in my head telling me to stop before I damage something worse, I force my head to turn.

  That has to be a two-way mirror. Who’s behind it? Suit guy with his coffee? Somebody worse? Distantly I wonder if somebody just watched me pee.

  More time passes. The ceiling of this room is divided into one hundred twenty-eight squares. There are forty-nine floor tiles that I can see, only eighteen of which are not broken up by the lines of the table and suit guy’s abandoned chair. There are sixteen whole white-painted cinder blocks reflected in the two-way mirror, and if I add the fractions of the partially reflected ones together, I get another ten. I can hold my breath for thirty-nine seconds before my vision starts to sparkle. I should really work on that.

  At some point they bring me food. Water. A big cold glass of it. Ice and lemon. Condensation beaded down the sides. The fact that it looks exactly like the glass of water 22 poured me a lifetime ago is almost definitely no accident.

  A bot comes in and sets it all down on the table and then leaves. Nobody uncuffs my wrists. They just leave me here with it. Who knows how long. My stomach went beyond growling some while ago and is now trying to chew off its own leg. The water in that glass is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

  I sit there long enough for the food to congeal, the ice in the glass to melt. Then suit guy comes back in. He doesn’t undo the restraints either.

  “Who do you work for?”

  “I’m a game streamer. I work for my subscribers. Like the one you people killed.”

  “Who sent you to take footage of the Stellaxis Innovations sublevels?”

  The sublevels specifically. Interesting. He watches this register in my face and flushes with anger.

  “Look. Whoever it is, they’re not coming for you. I am trying to treat you civilly here.”

  “By tying me to a chair?”

  “By not doing worse. I’m willing to buy that you’re a dumb kid who got in over her head. But for that to happen, I need you to tell me who put you up to it.”

  “Nobody put me up to anything.”

  “Right.” He reaches across the table, slides the glass of water back across toward him, takes a sip. “You forgot.”

  “No.” You unmitigated douche. “I didn’t. But there’s no way I could possibly make somebody like you understand.”

  “I’m afraid you’re going to have to try.”

  “Have you ever been to old town?”

  He nearly spit-takes my water. Asshole. “I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.”

  “In old town, that glass of water is half a day’s ration. That’s for eating, bathing, laundry, cooking, making coffee, brushing your teeth, flushing your toilet, whatever. You want more water, you’re buying it. A dollar an ounce at the company store. Almost nobody has jobs, not full-time city jobs. All the abandoned stores and restaurants and stuff have people living in them. I live in a hotel room
with eight other people. One hundred percent of my income for the past couple of weeks has been from the internet. Before that, in case you were wondering, I used to walk dogs.” Very glamorous. Very spylike.

  “Elaborate, please.”

  “On the dogs? Well, there’s this—”

  “No.”

  I fail to shrug. “I stream a video game. I post videos. People pay me tips. A few dollars here, an ounce of water there. The more interesting the stream, the more tips. The more time I can borrow before I’m in a fucking rehydration clinic getting new kidneys printed. Okay?”

  For a long, long moment he watches me. “You can’t possibly be trying to convince me that you posted that video for tips.”

  “Really? Look, I don’t know how much people get paid to walk dogs where you come from, but—”

  He tilts his head to one side, like he’s just heard some fascinating distant sound. “Then why not post it immediately? You sat on the second half of the footage for days. Why?”

  “I wanted to post the first half first,” I say. “Give people a taste. Like a cliffhanger in a TV show?”

  Suit guy smiles like a shark. “Do you want to know what I think?”

  I don’t trust my mouth to answer this, so I just sit back and wait.

  “I think something happened to your contact and left you holding the bag. I don’t know why you posted that video eventually, and honestly I don’t care. I want to know who you were reporting to in the first place.”

  He wants me to say Greenleaf Industries, or drop the name of some kind of mole or double agent or I don’t even know what. The only person from the Greenleaf side I could even name-drop if I wanted to is the CEO, and that’s only because she shows up on the news.

  “I’m not a spy,” I say tiredly. “I’m telling you. Up until last month, I used to walk dogs. Streaming pays better. Believe me—I wish I had a shiny glamorous secret job. I probably wouldn’t be so thirsty all the fucking time.”

  He sets both palms flat against the table and leans forward conspiratorially. “If only that explained the later videos you posted,” he says. “Or the riot you incited.” He swipes the still from the HQ video down to the smart surface of the table. 22’s back and shoulder shielding me from view. 06 in the background, up in the guard’s face. “Or whatever I’m looking at here.”