To waste the time needed to let his coffee cool enough to drink, he got into the lift, intending on going up to the twenty-first floor and causing a stir. However there was no longer a button for that floor, nor yet for the twenty-second, or the second. In their place, an eye-scanner had been installed. Faster than bunnies. Getting out on the twentieth floor, he walked up the next flight, finding that the doors to access the twenty-first were now made of thick reinforced steel. He gave them a shove with his shoulder for good measure, but the wall seemed more likely to give than the door. The prospect of that made him smile: What was the point in installing a door which was so much stronger than the walls around it?
As it transpired, he didn’t need to break in anyway, since the doors opened of their own accord, revealing an armoured I.T.F. android - an android, not a soldier. “What are you doing here?” it said in a deep, intimidating voice, its hand resting on a holster containing a worryingly real-looking gun. It was a kicka; a heavy duty tactical model fresh out this year, designed for wars that never happened anymore.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Hammell said, nosing past it to see if he might spot any of the real agents inside. All he saw was a set of equally sturdy looking inner doors. “Do they make you stand between the doors?” he asked as he peered into the narrow, windowless space. “Do they at least leave a light on for you?”
“Why did you push the door?” the kicka asked.
“I slipped.”
“Please leave. Loitering in the hallway is not permitted.”
“Well, I wasn’t loitering until you started talking to me,” Hammell said as he turned and walked back down the stairs. The android watched him until he was out of sight, and he watched it back. It wasn’t much of a stir, but it was better than nothing.
Ridding himself of his cup via a whitetip, he made his way back down to the cupboard.
“Did you get me one?” Asha Ishi asked as he walked past her desk.
Hammell rolled his eyes. “No.”
Shaking her head, Asha Ishi muttered something under her breath. He couldn’t hear clearly but he was fairly sure he caught the word ‘pathetic’. Slumping down into his chair, he looked around for something to do next to waste a little more of the day, feeling low. He reached for the open box of bands, knowing no good would come of it. I can’t believe I’m back to this. I’m so sorry, Dave. But before he could ping one at Asha Ishi, an alarm went off in his implant. Swiping his hand to call up a display, he called up the urgent, flashing message on polnet. Sitting up suddenly, he glanced over at Asha Ishi, seeing that she had received it too. An unspoken question passed between them.
They bolted for the door at exactly the same moment.
The private nat was again parked a couple of roads away, but on a different street this time. Hammell noticed this time that they walked past dozens of perfectly viable parking spots on the way to it. Observing her surreptitiously, he noted that the route Asha Ishi took was not the most direct one. The more he watched, the more he noticed. She was varying her pace irregularly, even altering her gait. Her collar was pulled up high and her rain hat was pulled down low. She walked on the side of the pavement closest to buildings, never next to the road, avoiding being caught on the surveillors wherever she could. Not just crazy. Paranoid.
Flying high over the city, skirting the base of the cloud blanket, Hammell suspected now that it had nothing to do with bravado. She was making herself more difficult to track, while staying just within the boundaries of the legal flight lanes. She took them south towards the river, following the trail that Providence was laying out for them. Somewhere, far below, an android was riding on a motorbike, its saddlebags stuffed full of books and old photographs. It led them to an abandoned wharf on the murky river.
Not wanting to spook anyone, Asha Ishi brought the nat down a couple of kilometres away and they approached on foot, trudging through the mud along the riverbank until they came to a warehouse. Hammell walked on obliviously, unable to see anything much through the dense mist coming in off the water - and felt a hand on his arm stopping him. Asha Ishi was pointing to one of the smaller ramshackle buildings to the right. Following her finger, he caught a movement in the window. The approach to the warehouse was being watched.
“How do we get in then?” Hammell whispered.
Asha Ishi began rooting around in her rucksack and he caught a glimpse of the crowbar she’d used at Eva’s house, some spare clothing, a picture frame and a roll of aluminium foil. She really is fucking mental, he thought, wondering what she might pull out next from inside that big mystery bag. It turned out to be a scarf, somewhat disappointingly. She pointed towards the window and mimed tying it over her mouth.
“You do have another scarf!” Hammell said and Asha Ishi shot him the kind of look to which he was becoming accustomed.
The idea of detaining someone arbitrarily was mildly troubling, but they would likely be in the clear from a legal standpoint. The dock was listed as abandoned and was scheduled for demolition. Anyone here was trespassing - and even more than that, these people were suspected Red Hands. Searching his trench coat pocket, he pulled out a pair of ancient plastic cuffs and picked off the bits of fluff. He gave them a quick tug - the plastic didn’t seem to have degraded - and then nodded to his partner.
Sneaking around the side of the small, corrugated iron structure, they located the entrance - a rectangular hole cut into the thin metal. Asha Ishi ducked in first and Hammell poked his head around more cautiously, seeing a solitary man seated on a moulded plastic chair by the window. Clearly not the world’s greatest guard, his eyes were closed and he couldn’t hear Asha approaching over the noise of the desk fan he’d thrust his face into. For a moment Hammell envied him the coolness of that fan, but then Asha Ishi sent a squirt of mace into the whirring blades.
Where did that come from? Hammell wondered as he watched her practically drowning the poor man in the stuff as he lay writhing on the floor. Entering the hut, Hammell pinged Asha Ishi’s victim but he received no results. The networks are being blocked. It made him think back to The Happy Trout.
Asha Ishi finished the can and tossed it away as Hammell felt his own eyes beginning to sting. He looked around for a way to air the place out, but the windows were all already open; like the door, they were merely holes cut into the metal so couldn’t in fact be closed. Turning back to Asha Ishi, he saw her pin the man’s right arm with her knee as she crushed his hand with a brick.
“What the fuck?” Hammell whispered.
The guard screamed out in agony, but Asha Ishi was on him quickly, stuffing her scarf down his throat and coiling duct tape around his head to keep it in.
“Where are you getting all these things?” Hammell said, looking at her bag with both wonder and alarm. “How do you know he’s not a leftie?” He regretted it the instant the words left his mouth, as Asha Ishi nipped across the man’s body and crushed his other hand. The poor guy tried to cry out again, but his screams were muffled by the gag. He lay there choking, struggling to breathe, his red eyes and flaring nostrils streaming. When Asha Ishi was finished, Hammell pointed out the walkie talkie on the table. “They’re blocking the networks.”
“We can’t take any chances,” Asha Ishi replied, and he supposed she was right. They were after all risking their lives here. He even found himself nodding as she leaned over and hit the guard over the head with the brick.
“What the fuck!” he exclaimed again and Asha Ishi put a finger to her lips indicating that he should be quiet. “What are you…?” he said, catching her hand before she could strike again. “We came to talk, to arrest!”
Asha Ishi turned to the guard, who was lolling about on the floor as blood seeped from a big gash on his scalp. “You’re under arrest, by the way.”
“How can we get anything out of him now?”
“Let's not kid ourselves,” Asha Ishi said as she yanked her hand free and raised the brick again. “We’re here to find your girlfriend.”
/>
“It’s not all that easy to knock someone out,” Hammell said as he attempted to get a hand in the way to lessen the next blow. “You’re more likely to fracture his skull, give him bleeding on the brain, kill him. Check your implant.”
Asha Ishi shrugged; a particularly cold and callous gesture, even for her.
“He’d already have raised the alarm if he could have,” Hammell said. “What happened to just tying him up? I don’t remember you miming macing him and smashing in his skull.”
Hammell stared at her and Asha Ishi finally conceded, dropping the brick. “Ok, fine, but if he warns them and we’re caught, it’ll be your fault.”
“I’ll live with that,” Hammell said.
“Not for long.”
Moving quickly, in case the tiny psychopath beside him changed her mind, Hammell draped one of the barely-conscious man’s arms over a water pipe and bound his hands together with the cuffs. All the time he carefully watched his partner for any sudden movements. She was starting to display the lunacy he’d always known was lurking beneath the surface, but he wasn’t feeling the slightest bit smug about having been the only one who spotted it, possibly because he was feeling more than a little scared of her.
He finished securing the guard and then quickly rifled through his pockets, putting his possessions on the table: A few coins and banknotes with Roy Brown’s image on them, a big knife and a small pistol, the latter of which especially fascinated Asha Ishi. In a sudden burst of indignation, Hammell snatched the gun away from her, marched over to the window and hurled it out into the river, knowing divers could recover it later. “You’re too fucking crazy to have a gun,” he told her.
The young woman watched him with her blank, dead eyes and he saw that she’d picked up the knife now and was feeling the sharpness of the blade with her thumb. Her eyes were locked onto his, as if daring him to do that again.
“Let’s go,” he said, deciding not to.
He set off and Asha Ishi followed him, testing the weight of the knife in her hand as she came. She never sweated, he noted as he glanced back at her. She always appeared perfectly together, even when she was out in the hot, unbreathable fog in a high pressure situation. In contrast, Hammell could feel that his back and armpits were soaked.
They approached the main building just as a small cargo ship was setting off from the dock, forcing them to duck behind an enormous pile of thick, rotten rope. When the ship was far enough away, they peered out again and crept close enough to see the stack of crates which had been unloaded onto the jetty. A man in a forklift truck was moving the cargo into the warehouse through a huge set of open doors. They waited until the vehicle was facing the river and then nipped inside.
The warehouse was vast and dimly lit, with most of the light coming through the doorway or through gaps in the walls and holes in the roof. The stink of the dock water was alleviated a little in here by the scent of freshly cut wood. Here and there were bits of old, rusty, unidentifiable equipment, and at the back Hammell could see dozens of brand new wooden crates.
“We’ve hit the motherlode,” Asha Ishi whispered.
“What?” Hammell said. “What do you think is in them?”
Before Asha Ishi answered - not that she seemed like she was going to - the forklift began beeping as it reversed outside. In seconds they would be visible. Sprinting across the warehouse, they dived behind the crates and Hammell peered back through a gap to watch another box being added to the stack. He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see his partner raising the crowbar. His eyes widened in alarm as it crossed his mind that they were off Providence here, but Asha Ishi merely jammed it beneath the lid of one of the crates. As she began to work it open, the walkie talkie let out a sudden burst of static and Hammell fumbled as he pulled it from his pocket to turn the volume down, cutting off garbled message.
“Sorry,” he breathed.
Asha Ishi gave him her standard look and then put her eye to the gap. Hammell leaned over her, seeing that the man in the forklift was over by the doors, head turned in their direction, a confused expression on his face. He leaned out of the cab for a moment, but then changed his mind and went back to work. Hammell exhaled as he dabbed at the sweat on his brow, thinking that he really wasn’t cut out for espionage.
“It would’ve been useful to know what they were saying,” Asha Ishi said as she looked down at the radio, and Hammell stared at her blankly. He really couldn’t win.
The lid came loose and he helped Asha Ishi lower it gently and quietly to the ground. The crate was filled to the brim with sawdust, which they quickly brushed away to reveal what was hidden beneath: Equipment. Technology. Implants, in fact. Picking one out, Hammell blew away the wood shavings. It was old and worn, meaning used, meaning it had once been inside someone’s head. He dropped it quickly, wiping his hand on his trouser leg. “Smuggling?” he asked, but Asha Ishi didn’t respond. Her face was duller than usual, displaying her version of disappointment.
Moving on to another crate, Asha Ishi forced it open recklessly, heedless of the noise she was making. Hammell glanced nervously through the gap, relieved to see that the driver had not yet returned. The next crate contained beacons. She moved on to another and then another, hurling down the lids as she ploughed through them. “Shhhh!” Hammell hissed, the sweat standing out on his brow again, but his partner was as oblivious as she was deranged. The crates contained memory chips, black boxes, iPalms, iEyes - all of it used, implanted tech. She finally stopped and Hammell could tell, in spite of her face, that she was dumbfounded. “We have to call it in,” he said, but Asha Ishi shook her head.
The walkie talkie went off again and he again looked for the driver, wondering what was keeping him. Turning up the volume, he caught the tail end of a message from an android, asking where to deliver the bags. Hammell’s ears pricked up as he listened intently for the response.
“Building three,” came a familiar female voice. “I’m on the jetty. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
After a quick check for the driver, Hammell bolted across the warehouse and slipped out of the doors, not bothering to wait for Asha Ishi. He found another place to hide behind a decrepit boat, beside a small building composed of warped, rotted wood, and his partner appeared beside him. They crouched in the mud and Hammell’s pulse quickened as he saw her chatting with the forklift driver: Eva, dressed incongruously in a light summery dress and a pair of black wellington boots several sizes too big for her. She waved to the driver and set off along the river and Hammell seized his chance, slipping around the wooden hut to get in front of her. As she appeared around the corner, he stepped out.
“Hello, Eva,” he said casually, seeing a look of horror spread slowly across her face. She grabbed for her walkie talkie, but Asha Ishi was on her in a flash, knocking it from her grasp into the wet mud. Knife in hand, Asha Ishi railroaded the frightened woman down to the river to a more secluded spot.
“The apartment,” Eva said as she attended to her skewed clothing. “I knew it would never be safe.”
Hammell shrugged, letting her know she was right.
“I could scream,” she said.
“You could get your throat cut,” Asha Ishi responded, raising the knife, and Hammell turned to stare at her.
What the fuck is wrong with you? he wanted to ask, but he bit his tongue, hoping she was just playing the bad cop role. Before the guard, he would have been certain of it.
“There’s still time,” Eva said. “There are no networks here.”
“Time for what?” Hammell asked.
“You have an iEye, right?”
“It’s private,” he said. “I choose what gets uploaded.”
“Don’t be naïve,” Eva said and even Asha Ishi was nodding.
“Oh, you’re with her now?”
“Enough with the flirting,” Asha Ishi said. “Where are the weapons?”
“What weapons?” Eva asked.
“Yeah, what
weapons?” Hammell asked, confused.
Grabbing Eva by the throat, Asha Ishi threw her up against a sodden wooden breakwater, thrusting the knife tip against her stomach. Hammell reached out to stop her, but then drew his hand back uncertainly. Even if she is playing bad cop, just how bad is her bad cop?
“You’d best start saying something I want to hear,” Asha Ishi said as she ran the knife down Eva’s sternum, “unless you want me to ruin your pretty dress. Blood stains can be so difficult to wash out.”
“I don’t know what you want,” Eva said, looking desperately to Hammell for help; he held his nerve. “I don’t… there are no weapons.”
“No? That’s a shame - for you,” Asha Ishi said and she raised the knife, placing the tip against Eva’s lower eyelid. “Shall I pop out an eyeball? It must be hard for your brain to make sense of what you’re seeing if it’s still working while it’s hanging down your face.” She pressed it hard enough to make Eva gasp.
“Ok! Ok! Wait! I’ll give you something - something else - something you want.”
Asha Ishi eased back and Hammell felt a wave of guilt as Eva reached up with a trembling hand to touch her eye. Her finger came away red. “I’ll need something in return,” she said quietly.
“Your life,” Asha Ishi offered.
“What?” Hammell asked.
“You have to let us go,” Eva said as she looked up at him. “All the people, all the androids and all the crates.”
Asha Ishi barked out a laugh and Eva turned to her, eyes blazing. “There are no weapons here!” she snarled, before turning back to Hammell again, her eyes suddenly those of a wounded puppy.
She sees my unease. Maybe she feels a connection too, he thought. Or maybe she’s identified you as the weak link, his brain retorted.
“A couple of hours, that’s all,” Eva continued. “Just a head start before you call it in. And let me do something about your iEye recording. Please.”
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