by Kim Curran
‘But what about all the people?’ he says. ‘We can’t avoid being seen by them.’
‘We need a distraction.’ I look around, both with my eyes and the digital eyes I’m piggybacking.
Three kids sit on a wall, returning the scowls of passers-by. They can’t be much older than twelve, fourteen, tops. Although they’re trying to pretend that they’re older than that. That they’re trouble.
‘Those kids,’ I say.
Ethan turns to where I’m pointing and doesn’t need any more of an explanation. ‘Wait here.’
I lean up against a wall, making sure my hood covers my face, before sliding slowly to the ground, giving into the flow, letting it wash over me.
// OTHER PLANETS CANNOT BE AS BEAUTIFUL AS OURS. //
// SHE’S SO BEAUTIFUL. I DON’T KNOW HOW TO TALK TO HER. //
I hear the high-pitched chime of metal on concrete and a coin bounces off the paving stone and into my lap. I look up to see who’s decided I need their charity. There’s nothing but turned backs as people walk by. It could have been any one of them.
‘Three minutes!’ Ethan runs towards me, out of breath. ‘Three minutes and we’ll have our distraction.’
‘What did you tell them?’ I say, clambering to my feet once more.
‘I told them how to adjack. And said they might want to cause a distraction while they’re doing it. They’re arguing over who gets to throw the brick at the shop window right now.’
We walk to the edge of the park and wait, counting down the seconds. It’s not been even two minutes when there’s a smash followed by the screech of alarms. All eyes on the street turn in the direction of the noise. The opposite direction to where we’re heading.
I try to block out the feed coming from everyone around me and focus on the CCTV footage, trying to stay in that space between the feeds.
‘Stop,’ I say, holding Ethan back as the camera swings to cover the ground a few feet in front of us. ‘Now,’ I say when it starts to turn.
It’s like a dance, between us and the cameras. Quick, quick, slow. Quick, quick, slow.
We near the church, its tall spire casting a long shadow on the pavement in front of us. It’s blasting out a single sermon.
// AND THE LORD SAID, ‘BEHOLD, THEY ARE ONE PEOPLE, AND THEY HAVE ALL ONE LANGUAGE, AND THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING OF WHAT THEY WILL DO. AND NOTHING THAT THEY PROPOSE TO DO WILL NOW BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR THEM.’ //
The door is up ahead. I recognise the flaking red paint and the brass sign screwed into the brick wall from the footage of Hwang. Gentle Dental is engraved in thin, sharp letters, followed by three names, all with Dr at the front and BDS at the end. Dr Hwang’s name isn’t among them.
As I reach my hand to the buzzer there’s a blast of sirens. At first I think they’ve found us, that it’s all over. Then I realise the noise is coming from behind us. Back where the window was smashed.
‘Were we wrong?’ I say, looking up at Ethan. ‘Using them like that?’
Ethan shrugs. ‘They were going to get themselves in trouble anyway. This way, at least it will have been for a reason.’
I press the doorbell and a few moments later there is a buzzing sound. I push the door open.
24
THE CARPET ON THE STAIRCASE smells of rubber and is so clean I wonder if we’re the first people to tread on it.
Sitting behind a reception desk is a small, dark-haired lady. She’s knitting while gazing into the middle distance, probably watching a soap or something.
I cough.
She pulls her attention back to the real world, an instinctive smile on her face. The smile fades as she looks Ethan and me up and down. ‘Yes, can I help you?’
‘We’re here to see Dr Hwang,’ I say.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, not sounding sorry at all. ‘There’s no one here of that name. You must have the wrong building.’ She looks back down at her knitting and tuts.
Ethan smacks both hands on the desk in front of her, which shocks her so much she drops her ball of wool. It goes rolling out from under the reception and towards my feet.
‘Tell Dr Hwang that if he doesn’t come out soon, we’re coming in.’
The woman looks scared. I’m impressed. Ethan can be a real badass when he wants.
‘Um...’ she says, turning her head ever so slightly to the side, her eyes darting towards a door on the left.
‘Thanks,’ Ethan says. He grabs my hand and pulls me towards the closed door.
As Ethan raises his foot, the door swings open. Dr Hwang stands there. He looks paler than when I last saw him and his confident smile is gone. He glances from Ethan to me, bending his head slightly to look beneath my hood.
He nods. ‘Come.’
I throw the receptionist a last look. She’s lost in Glaze again, her hands a blur and her knitting needles clattering against each other, too absorbed to realise there’s no wool left on the needles.
Dr Hwang leads the way down a corridor that smells like rubber and bleach. The smell sets something off and I’m hit by images of hospitals and waiting rooms and dentists. So much anxiety.
// IT’S THE SMELL OF THESE PLACES I HATE. //
// WISH ME LUCK FOR MY OPERATION TOMORROW. //
// … THERE WAS A DEMAND FOR MORE BODIES TO OPERATION ON, THE RESURRECTION MEN SAW AN … //
Ethan grabs me as I fall against the wall and manages to keep me on my feet. ‘Hold on, Petri.’
I search among the mess for a single image to grab hold of; a water fountain in a room somewhere, a wall with water flowing down it. I don’t know how long it will last.
Dr Hwang gives me the briefest of concerned looks then enters a small office. There’s a glass desk, a chair and a tall lamp that bends in a smooth curve in front of the window. He sits on the chair behind the desk, turns an envelope over to hide the address, and looks up at us. I’ve never been very comfortable with silences. And this one is stretching forever.
I push my hood back. ‘Fix it. Now.’
‘You are experiencing difficulties with your chip?’ Dr Hwang says, slow and deliberate. He pulls a notebook towards him and looks around the gleaming desk.
I laugh. ‘Difficulties? You have no idea. And the pen you’re looking for is on the floor.’
He blinks, then folds his hands in front of him. ‘Tell me.’
‘It doesn’t work. It’s never worked. It’s just noise and—’
‘Adjustment period.’
‘Don’t give me that adjustment period crap. Whatever you and Logan did, it’s broken. I can see everything. Everything except what I want to see. There’s no filter, just millions and millions of voices. All the time! And I can’t take it any more.’ Tears roll down my face.
‘Ah, and this is since the virus?’ he says.
‘No,’ Ethan steps in as I’m too angry to speak now. ‘Since the start. What did you do to her chip?’
Hwang unfolds his arms and places his hands on the table. ‘The blanks the police use are almost identical to the usual Glaze chips. They’re even manufactured in the same factory. The only difference is they are designed to transmit data rather than receive it. The Glaze chips are then programmed using a virus injected into the bloodstream at the same time as the chip is implanted. That’s why you have to wait a couple of hours before accessing Glaze, so the nanobots can do their job.’
How did I not know about this? I thought I knew everything there was to know about Glaze.
‘But the nanotech can also be exploited by using a virus. Which when injected into the host body targets the chip. This is what I did with you, Miss Quinn. I injected the virus into your blood stream and the nanobots rewrote your chip’s programming.’
‘And did you cook up this virus yourself?’ Ethan says.
‘I replicated it using plans from the WhiteInc factory in Korea. It should have worked.’
‘Well, it didn’t,’ Ethan says.
‘We followed the plans exactly. Are you quite certain that this is
not an after-effect of the attack?’
‘Positive. What do you know about the attack?’
‘I had nothing to do with that.’
‘OK, let’s pretend I believe that for a second. But what do you know now, why is it affecting some people and not others?’ Ethan leans his fists on the table.
‘How do you mean, affecting?’
‘My mother, my friend, people on the street, they’re all in comas,’ I say, holding my head in my hands.
‘I read rumours, but there have been no official reports.’ Hwang sounds interested. Excited almost.
I slam my fist against the wall leaving a dent in the thin material. ‘No!’
// NO. // NON. // NEIN. //
‘Don’t you dare treat this like some experiment. Some game. This is my mother we’re talking about.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Hwang says. ‘But without any of the patient notes I cannot help you. Perhaps if you could get them for me I could ascertain what happened to your mother. Where have they taken her?’
‘WhiteInc,’ I say. ‘The hospital wing at WhiteInc.’
We all know what that means. It means there’s no chance we’re getting anywhere near her.
‘Was your mother on any medication?’
‘I don’t know. But I think my friend Kiara was. She said she’d started receiving treatment for depression.’
‘There have been some cases where an overdose of serotonin has led to comas, but I don’t see what that could have to do with the attack. I’m sorry, but without more information, I can’t help you.’ Hwang doesn’t sound sorry. He sounds like a doctor delivering news to a terminal patient. Which, in so many ways, he is.
‘What about Petri’s chip?’ Ethan says, looking at my face. I feel the blood leave my head. ‘Can you fix it or not?’
‘Perhaps I could run a scan and ascertain if I can get it operating correctly.’
‘No. I want off Glaze. For ever.’ Even if that means never being able to play a part in society, even if that means being an outcast, I’d rather that than what it’s doing to people. I turn back to Hwang. ‘Wipe it.’
‘This will not be simple.’
‘Why not? You made it sound simple enough.’
‘You’ve already been infected with a nanovirus from when I rewrote your blank chip. To do it again… there may be complications.’
‘More than what she’s already experiencing?’
Dr Hwang looks back down to his hands.
‘Are you even a doctor?’
‘Yes, I am,’ he says, snapping his head up. ‘In my home I was a very famous doctor.’
Unbidden, I’m hit with fresh information about Hwang, including photos of him walking out of a hospital, his hands failing to cover his face.
‘You were struck off?’
‘It was a misunderstanding. I was conducting experiments into how to boost the power of the chip and there were some… errors.’
‘How many errors?’ Ethan asks.
Dr Hwang closes his eyes before he answers. ‘Sixteen.’ I don’t know what he means. Then I pick up images from his feed: dead bodies under white sheets.
‘That’s why you’re not on. And you were using me to find a way back.’
The waterfall I’ve been watching shifts as the patient walks into a small room, where a black chair and a tray of tools wait. I drop the feed with a shake of my head. I’m drifting again, trying to find something to hold on to.
I find someone watching a film: an old movie I’ve seen time and time again. I cling to that feed and turn back to Dr Hwang.
‘If you can’t wipe it,’ I fight to say, the weight of the feed crushing me again. ‘There’s information.’
‘You need me to get information off the chip? I’m afraid that’s Mr Logan’s area of expertise.’
‘The message was from Logan and now he’s dead. WhiteShield killed him and his friends because they found out something about Glaze. They think I have that information too, so my only hope is to find the message Logan sent me and use it to stop them.’ The words come out in a rush. I don’t know how long I’ll be in control.
‘They are after you?’ Hwang says, his jaw tightening. ‘Then you must go now.’
‘You’re not getting rid of us that easily,’ Ethan says.
‘No!’ Hwang shouts getting to his feet. ‘You must go. Now.’
He’s right to be afraid. I see images from the CCTV outside. WhiteShield gathering at the door, readying themselves to smash it in.
‘Way out?’ I say, fighting to speak.
‘This way.’ Dr Hwang pushes us both out the door and points towards a window at the far end of the corridor. ‘I will attempt to delay them.’
He runs in the opposite direction as something heavy thuds on the door downstairs. Ethan and I race down the corridor. Ethan yanks at the window, but it won’t open.
‘Out of the way.’ I grab hold of a fire extinguisher and throw it with all of my strength through the window. We follow it through.
A metal ladder runs from the window to the floor. I start to clamber down but Ethan stops me. ‘They’ll be waiting. Go up.’
I pull myself up the ladder, rung by rung. Ethan is right behind me, urging me on. I make the mistake of looking down and the floor spins beneath me. I freeze.
‘Come on,’ Ethan says. ‘Keep going.’
My legs are jelly and my hands shake so much I can barely hold on, but finally I make it up.
I sprawl on the rooftop, feeling the comforting solidness of the concrete beneath me. I don’t have long to catch my breath.
‘Come on, Petri.’ Ethan jumps over me and keeps running.
‘What is it with you and roofs?’ I shout, getting to my knees and then my feet.
I chase after him, as he runs gracefully across the roof, hopping from chimney to chimney. My path is not so agile. I knock over a bucket of tar, left by someone repairing the roof, I guess. It’s still liquid. The blackness rolls down the slope and pours over the edge. An angry cry comes from below. It must have landed on someone following us.
Good, I think, and put on another burst of speed.
Ethan keeps stopping to check he hasn’t lost me, then races away to find a clear path. We’re two buildings away from Hwang’s office, running through an office block that is still under construction, when I realise we’re not alone. Something scrabbles behind me and I’m hit by a slide from a WhiteShield officer informing everyone of our position. I can even see my terrified face caught from way up high. A satellite feed perhaps?
There’s a deafening whoop whoop and a blinding light. A helicopter hovers in the sky like a great wasp, ready to sting. A man leans out of the open doorway, a gun in his hands. It’s pointed directly at me.
I turn to Ethan. He’s standing with one foot in a builder’s debris chute looking up at the helicopter, his eyes almost as wide as his mouth.
‘It’s me they want,’ I say. ‘Get out of here.’
‘I’m not leaving you,’ he says.
‘Yes, you are.’
I shove him as hard as I can and he goes sliding down the chute. I make out my name being called over the whirl of the blades overhead. I turn around and raise my arms.
Three WhiteShield officers run towards me. The one at the lead is covered in tar. As I open my mouth to speak he punches me in the face. Lights dance before my eyes before blackness closes in.
25
I’M STANDING IN LOGAN’S FLAT, watching him and his friends play a game on his enormous screens. They sit on his sofa, their backs turned to me, but I can tell they’re having a good time shooting everything that moves. Computerised men beg for their lives. Logan and his comrades don’t care. They blast off heads, then laugh and high five each other, leaving the headless bodies twitching in the dust. The team enters a building and it looks familiar, although I don’t know why. It’s old, with oil paintings on the wall and a large stairwell in the centre of the hallway. The paintings show scenes from what must be Hell: naked
bodies being torn limb from limb by cackling red devils; people being roasted over flames. They press forward, heading for the first room on the left. A door opens and there’s nothing inside but a small dog, whimpering on an Afghan carpet. A computer-graphic boot comes crashing down on the dog. When the boot is removed, there’s nothing but a red stain on the rug. The team laugh.
They clear the room and move towards a fireplace in the far wall. It slides up as they approach, revealing a huddled figure, her hands over her head. I can hear her crying but I can’t see her face. A gun is pressed against her head. She looks up, tears in her eyes, and I recognise that pale face. It is me.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know,’ video-game me says, over and over.
There’s a loud bang and I turn my face away from the screen. Logan and his friends whoop in victory. When I look up again, they have all turned to stare at me. They have no faces. Three dead smiles grin at me from fleshless skulls. They crawl over the sofa, teeth clattering, skeleton hands reaching out for me. I run for the door but it’s locked. I bang and bang on the door, begging someone to let me out. The sound of their biting teeth is coming closer and I have nowhere to go. I close my eyes and wait.
The chattering of teeth becomes the gentle patter of rain outside a window. Light bleeds through my closed eyes. I feel cotton against my cheek. Something soft yet heavy pressing down on me. I’m in a bed. But not my bed, I’m sure of that. When I open my eyes, the images of the nightmare fade, revealing a small room. My initial thought that I’m in prison is quickly pushed aside. I doubt there are any prisons as nice as this.
The room is totally white: white walls, ceiling, even the glass in the window next to me is frosted white. The only shock of colour comes from the yellow flowers in a vase on a small white table.
As I try to focus on the petals a door opens in the wall. A tall man is silhouetted in the light pouring in from outside. He takes a step forward and I recognise the dark suit and the red handkerchief. I make out the shapes of figures hovering behind him before the door closes.
