Company Town

by Madeline Ashby

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  Copyright Page

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  This book is dedicated to Richard Kedward, the teacher who taught me about the past and changed my future.

  And it is written in memory of the missing and murdered indigenous women of Canada. Rest in power.

  PART ONE

  SEPTEMBER

  1

  Broken Nose

  Hwa wondered if today was the day she would finally get to finish that sorry son of a bitch once and for all. She checked her watch. Eileen was officially late. She pinged. Waited. No answer. The client had paid for another tier of service, one where a bodyguard would keep a discreet distance. That tier was only for clients with trusted status. In Hwa’s experience, that trust could be a mistake. If the tower had recognized her face, Belle du Jour would have pinged the client and told him to finish up because she was on her way. But the towers never saw her face. And neither did some of the clients’ filters. That was part of her value to the organization. They simply didn’t see her coming until it was too late.

  She checked the hallway. Just a few stragglers: kids on their way to school, jostling each other at the elevators. No big guys. No roughnecks. No riggers. Nobody who would give her trouble if she was already in the process of making it for Eileen’s client. Ideal conditions.

  Hwa spoke into her watch: “Belle, my safecall is late; proceeding to contact.”

  There was a pause. “Keep us posted! Good luck!”

  Hwa stood up, checked the hall again, and knocked on the door. Inside there was giggling and a muffled, “I told you so!” Hwa rolled her eyes. The hallway was almost empty, now.

  “It’s okay, Mr. Moliter,” she said to the door. “Nobody’s gonna see you.”

  The door jerked open so fast he had to have been waiting for her. All these years later, he was still a pallid, fishlike man, with a weird gawping mouth and almost colourless eyes. He was short, and he acted like it. This morning was no exception.

  “How dare you say my name out here?” he hissed. “What if somebody’s parents heard you? What if—” He blinked. She watched the filters fall away from his eyes. He saw the stain. He recognized Hwa. He shut up.

  Hwa plastered a smile across her face. “Hi, Mr. Moliter,” she said in her cheeriest cute-half-Korean-girl voice. “How’s the eye?”

  The old scar across his right eyebrow twitched. He swallowed. Then he gathered some dignity by closing his robe and standing a little straighter. “It’s fine,” he said. “Doesn’t bother me at all.”

  “That’s real good to hear. So they reattached the retina and everything, huh?”

  Moliter licked his thin, raw lips. The man was dumb as a pike and twice as mean. He watched Hwa with one side of his face as he directed his voice into the apartment. “Eileen! Time to go!”

  Eileen was still giggling. She bounced out of the apartment and made an I’m sorry face at Hwa. She looked fine: rich red hair in place, eyeliner expertly winged, no bruises, no funny walking, no tears in her stockings. She even squeezed Moliter’s hand.

  “I had a great time,” Eileen said.

  “Yeah. Great. Bye.”

  “The United Sex Workers of Canada thank you for your business, Mr. Moliter.”

  He slammed the door in her face.

  Eileen turned to say something, but Hwa was already talking to her watch. “Belle, my safecall is accounted for. I’m taking her home, now.”

  “Good job!” the watch said. “Have a nice day!”

  “Thank you for knocking.” Eileen threaded one perfumed arm through Hwa’s. “Can we mug up? I’d dies for a real coffee.”

  “Teachers can’t afford the good stuff, eh?”

  “I have fucked teachers with much nicer coffee. Hell, I’ve fucked tutors with better taste.” Eileen squeezed her arm. “Please? Can we stop? There’s a good spot on my floor.”

  “Sure.”

  Eileen cocked her head to the side and closed her eyes. There was an audible crunch in her neck. “Ugh. I’ve had that all night.”

  They hustled into the elevator, and Eileen leaned against the glass. The massive blades of the windmill whirling outside cast her in shadow briefly, and then revealed her again. On and on, dark and light, as the blades of the mill cut and cut and cut through the veil of morning mist.

  “Busy night?” Eileen asked.

  Hwa shrugged. “Not too.”

  “People are just saving their money,” Eileen said. “New sheriff in town, and all that.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  Hwa hoped she sounded more certain than she felt. She honestly had no idea what the Lynch family would decide once they took ownership of New Arcadia. They could invite another agency in to encourage competition and bring down the hourly rates, or change up the fee-for-service model. Or they could be uptight about it and fire the agency, send all the sex workers scurrying back into massage parlours or whatever it was they used to pretend they did for money. And, of course, they could just shut the whole rig down, and watch the bottom fall out of every other business in the city once the roughnecks left. Lynch was still a privately held corporation. They didn’t have to release any policy statements on the subject of their sexual broad-mindedness or their employment strategy or anything else that might concern the town they had just bought. Not until they chose to bring the hammer down.

  She tried to smile. “Hey, if we have to move, at least you won’t have to fuck that fish-faced asshole again.”

  Eileen rolled her eyes. “Sacred Heart of Christ, Hwa, he’s not that bad.”

  Most of the other people in the elevator were pretending not to overhear them. A mother took her children out of the elevator on the next floor. Only a rigger was left. He stared openly at Eileen, blinking only when she adjusted her dress. Hwa watched him do this three different times before the doors chimed for Eileen’s floor.

  “Hold it.”

  Eileen pressed the hold button. She stood at the open doors. “What’s the problem?”

  “This guy’s the problem.” Hwa jammed her thumb and all her fingers into the salivary glands under the rigger’s greasy jaw. He swung for her and missed badly. She was probably nothing but a blur in his vision. “He’s got a staring problem, and I don’t like it.”

  “Fuck you,” the rigger managed to choke out.

  “No, fuck you, creepshot. She didn’t give you permission to take those pictures. Eileen, take his face and send it to Belle.”

  Eileen nodded. “Done.”

  Hwa pressed his throat so hard she held his Adam’s apple in her fingers. “Good. Now we know your face. So we’ll know if you ever make a date. Which means that if I ever catch you acting up with one of our workers, I’ll shave your balls with a cheese grater.”

 
He spat in her face. Hwa let him go. She ushered Eileen out of the elevator. When the doors closed, they watched each other for a moment. Eileen laughed first. Then they were laughing together. Eileen wiped Hwa’s face and hooked her arm into Hwa’s again. “Itching for a fight, were you?”

  “Always am, when I see that asshole.” Hwa flexed her fingers. “Moliter, I mean.”

  “You know, you could go back to school. I asked him.”

  Hwa pulled up short in the middle of the elevator court. “What?”

  “Moliter. I asked him. I asked if you could go back and finish. I know it was a few years ago, but he said you—”

  “You talked about me? During your appointment?”

  “Well, not during.… But after.”

  Hwa’s wrist squeezed. She checked it. The message was marked urgent. It was from her union rep’s personal account. Her immediate presence was requested.

  “No time for coffee,” she said.

  * * *

  Underneath all the bird shit and salt scars, the architecture of the docking platform was still grand: huge arches left over from some other investor’s future, all straight and white and minimalist. Now they were a dingy grey, like most everything else on the rig. People stretched a long way down the catwalks leading up to the platform. Most of them were young. They had the uniform builds of state-sponsored genetic tailoring. Nothing fancy, just the bare minimum Ottawa had finally guaranteed. They were recent hires, Hwa guessed, angry about the sale of the town and their sudden uncertainty within it. They looked like they’d stayed up all night. Thin grease filmed their foreheads, and they were all sharing droppers with each other.

  “You want?” one of them asked. She was a very pale girl with a bald head and a huge mandala spanning her gleaming skull. It glowed and pulsed along with her heartbeat, barely visible. The whole bioluminescent inkjob trend really didn’t work for white people. Not enough contrast.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Going to the handoff?”

  “Hadn’t planned on it.” Hwa watched the other girl’s eyes carefully. No nervous flickering gaze. She obviously couldn’t see Hwa’s true face. But her friends could. Their gazes kept landing on it and then flicking away, as though to make sure that the stain was still there, that it wasn’t a trick. It made sense. The bald girl had the inkjob. She obviously liked herself better augmented.

  “I just don’t think Lynch is the best solution for this community,” the bald girl said. “You know they’re just gonna flip it. Just take this whole town apart and sell it for scrap. That’s what they’ve been doing with every other rig-burg they buy.”

  “They might.” Hwa leaned over the rail. The early September sun was already hot at this early hour. She yearned for winter, when no one would look twice at her long sleeves.

  “Doesn’t that, like, concern you?”

  “They wouldn’t have bought this place if they didn’t think of it as an asset.” Hwa watched the maglev slide into place above them. It, too, came from somebody else’s future: a smooth fibreglass one where every machine looked a bit like a dolphin. “I’ll worry about it more when they make some kind of announcement.”

  “But we have a chance to influence them right now!” the girl said. She blinked furiously in Hwa’s direction. Then she did it again. Four times, with an earnest stare at the end.

  “She doesn’t have any eyes,” one of the girl’s friends said. He winced just looking at Hwa. “You have to show her something … real.”

  “What? Really? No way.” The girl closed her eyes tightly, waited a beat, and then opened them again. When she did, her mouth fell open. Her hand raised to cover it. She had seen Hwa’s true face, without any Mind Your Manners filters. Now she couldn’t help but stare. “Oh,” she said, finally.

  She knew Hwa was poor, now. She knew that whatever test might have warned Sunny about the baby she was carrying had been either ignored or unfinished. She knew that Sunny hadn’t thrown her embryo in the CRISPR drawer and looked at what came out. What she didn’t know was that the only reason she could see Hwa’s face at all was that Sunny had missed the province’s new twelve-week cutoff and had to keep her. That Sunny had even talked about giving her up, until the girl behind the desk at the agency’s adoption arm talked her out of it. Because nobody would want Hwa. Not unedited. Not with a face like that. Not with Sturge-Weber, and its associated potential for blindness and seizures and Christ knew what else. Not when they could just buy a better baby somewhere else, one that came pre-edited and perfect. So Sunny should just try and be a good mother. After all, she obviously loved her little boy—the one she’d brought out to this city, this tower of flame and poison floating on a dead ocean—so very much. She just needed to try harder with Hwa. Really. The love would come. Eventually. Maybe.

  “Does it…?”

  “No,” Hwa said. “It doesn’t hurt.”

  * * *

  Nail stood waiting for her in the elevator court at the base of Tower Three.

  “Morning,” she said, as he guided her to the private elevator that would take them to her union rep’s headquarters. Nail didn’t answer. He had given his voice to Mistress Séverine; he spoke only when allowed to. It took a bit of getting used to. The first few times they’d met it was awkward. Now Hwa just considered him a good listener.

  Nail had to duck his head as they entered the elevator. As they descended, so did the temperature. Hwa kept her eyes averted from the numbers above the door as they changed. She hated to think of all that water pressing in above them. Finally the elevator came to a stop, and the red light in the ceiling turned vibrantly green.

  Nail spun the winch on the door. When it swung open, the smell of burnt sugar and saddle soap wafted through. They entered a circular space walled almost entirely in glass save for the door behind them. The space was completely underwater. Through the glass, the black waters of the Atlantic and whatever inhabited them were plainly visible. Right now, what inhabited them was a man in a breathesuit. He stood chained inside a shark cage.

  “Oh, good, Hwa.” Mistress Séverine stood up. She wore a white silk robe that gleamed and rippled as she crossed the room to shake Hwa’s hand. Her grip was as ferociously strong as ever. Hwa could still feel the power in her hands through Séverine’s leather gloves.

  “Ma’am.”

  “Please sit. Nail, please bring another place setting. You will eat, won’t you?”

  Nail disappeared into another room before Hwa could protest. She almost called out to him that he didn’t have to go to any extra trouble for her, but the kitchen door clanged shut behind him and she swallowed her words.

  “Hwa, do sit. Please. And ignore the man in the cage. One of his neural implants started malfunctioning during his third tour of duty. He has asked me to help him reexperience fear. The process requires our complete disregard.”

  Hwa found her seat on a low white sofa. Mistress Séverine resumed her club chair, which sat quite a bit higher. Hwa understood that the arrangement of the furniture was meant to make clients feel like supplicants, but it was annoying for everyday business. She hunched forward.

  “Don’t slouch, Hwa.”

  She sat up straighter. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And take that hair out of your face. I like seeing people when I speak to them.”

  Hwa tried to secure the left parting of her hair behind her ear. When she met Séverine’s gaze, the older woman smiled. “That’s better.” She turned her gaze to the kitchen door, and out walked Nail and Rusty, bearing a silver tea set and a tower of pastries on their respective trays. The men set each tray down silently and stood, staring at Séverine.

  “Rusty, please tell Hwa about her breakfast.”

  Rusty was Nail’s opposite: short where the other man was tall, talkative and not silent, gingery blond and not dark. He gestured at each item as he described it. “Good morning. For breakfast you have Earl Grey tea, steamed egg custard with smoked salmon, laminated croissants with bakeapple filling, and
goat’s milk yogurt topped with blueberry-verbena compote.”

  Séverine began removing her gloves. “Thank you, Rusty. The two of you may leave. I’ll ring for you when we’re finished here.”

  Both men bowed, and took their leave. Hwa reached for the teapot, but Séverine shooed her hand away. “I’ll pour. You may begin assembling your plate. The tongs are just there.”

  The china Séverine favoured was so thin Hwa could perceive light through it. The sight of her own grubby fingers on it made her wince. She grabbed one of everything and waited for Séverine to finish pouring. Then she waited as the other woman took her time putting together her plate, unrolling her napkin, and choosing her cutlery. She weighed her spoon in her hand thoughtfully, as though evaluating a weapon.

  “I have work for you today, Hwa.” Her spoon slid into the custard and along the edge of the ramekin to bring up a steaming lump of yellow flecked with pink. “Rusty and Nail are going to the handoff, and I want you to escort them.”

  Hwa swallowed her yogurt. She had never been to the new platform. After the Old Rig exploded, the town had voted to build another. But it hadn’t come cheap. It was part of why all the other companies were pulling out, and how Lynch could buy the town so cheap. What remained of the old platform waved halfheartedly from beneath the water like a veteran waggling an accusatory stump at passersby. Whenever her train swerved over it, she made sure not to look. If the dead caught you looking, they might start looking back.

  “I understand if it’s difficult for you.”

  “It’s not difficult.” Hwa plunged her spoon into the savoury custard with a bit too much force.

  “And for this job, it will be necessary for you to escort the boys at a distance. Be as unobtrusive as possible.”

  Hwa frowned. “Wait a second.” She hunched over her knees, slouching be damned. “You want me to spy—”

  “Oh, hush. I’m not asking you to do anything untoward. Just follow them and make sure they’re safe, as with any other job.” Séverine watched Hwa over the rim of her teacup. “This town is changing, Hwa. My boys want to see that change happen. But I’ve already watched my share of train wrecks.”