Escapology

by Ren Warom

  “You know it’s bioware?” Shock says.

  “Yeah, I know that.”

  “Well, so are we. Inside me, it’s like it’s drowning in new info. To put it bluntly, it’s evolving, growing. Once it grows beyond my drive, into my brain, it’ll take over. Then it could do anything. Destroy Slip and everything in it. Or tear all the locks off, freeing the Queens. Maybe lock us in forever. Who knows? But we can’t risk letting it happen, considering the wealth of bad scenarios. Breaker can try and stop it, but it has to be out of my drive, and it has to be before Emblem leaks beyond. Once that happens, there’s no way to get to it—or stop it.”

  “Hold on now,” Amiga says. “If Emblem’s filling your drive, how will Breaker get it out?”

  “He’ll have to take my drive out, link to it direct for an extraction.”

  “But that’ll kill you.”

  “Could do, yeah.”

  Amiga sort of quietly implodes with fury at that point. It’s impressive. And viral. Within seconds the whole room has erupted into argument, some for, some against, neatly divided between the pirates and the Hornets. Everyone has a fucking opinion one way or another. Thing is, there’s only one person carrying Emblem in their skull. One person who gets to choose what happens to it, and to him.

  “I want to go,” Shock says, all but shouting, and then talking too loudly into too heavy silence. “I promised I would, and if we get there too late, or he can’t do what he thinks he can, then I’ll destroy my drive with a fucking bullet myself. Or you can.”

  He throws that one at Amiga, because she can do it if he can’t. And she would. She’d probably do it now if he asked, but he won’t. Emblem is their only hope against the Queens. If she destroys his drive, destroys Emblem, then that option is gone forever and so are the locks on Hive. Breaker won’t have time to write anything like this again. A bullet is only for the worst-case scenario.

  Amiga tilts her head, fixing him with an inscrutable gaze.

  “That so?”

  It’s like she’s asking a question based on what he’s thinking rather than what he’s said. Probably she’s seen straight through him. Amiga’s sharp, a human flensing knife. She’s what was made of her, and so is he. And both of them want to change it. That’s why they’re here. He knows she’ll understand.

  “If this is fixable, I need to try and fix it, whatever it costs me. I’m done being a fuck-up, okay? I’m done.”

  She smiles just a little, goes to talk, but Volk totally screws the moment. Woman’s got all the subtlety of a land ship ploughing into rocks.

  “That’s decided then,” she says, giving him this look like he’s gone and surprised her. Pleasantly so. Probably she thought they’d have to drag him kicking and screaming, or lie to him to get him there. A day ago they would have.

  “And if the Queens get it?” Amiga asks, bristling with tension, or temper. Considering her gun’s still tickling Volk’s nose, Shock votes for the latter. “If the fucking Harmonys are waiting for him to go to the Heights, and they get it? What then?”

  The ugly man speaks up then. He’s got the sort of voice you can lean on, thick and rough as rock.

  “If he needs protection, he’s got it. He’s not doing this alone.”

  “Who the fuck are you that I should trust you?” snarls Amiga.

  “Someone who wants to help,” he says, with a shrug. “Who knows the value of chance. I presume, not being short of intelligence, you dig all the chance that brought you here?”

  Amiga shrugs one shoulder. “Sure.”

  “Well, I’m a pragmatist. I say maybe things happen for a reason, maybe they don’t, but when you reach a point where you can take chance and turn it into intent, you don’t walk away. You act.”

  Amiga lowers her gun.

  “That’s a philosophy I can align with,” she says quietly. “But we are not in a position to act recklessly. Twist’s still out there. You know, the guy who was casually shooting up my friend just to fuck with me? And a few missing fingers won’t stop him any more than they’ve stopped this Haunt. Twist will regroup and come back harder. So will the rest. And then we have the Harmonys, who I can assure you are beyond lunatic. We cannot casually step out and wander on up to the Heights. That shit is doomed to failure. That shit ends in cremations all round.”

  “Not arguing with that,” he says. “Any ideas? Because staying here ain’t gonna fly either.”

  Sniffing, Amiga directs a considering gaze down at the floor of all things.

  “Gotta be a way to get to that engine,” she says to Maggie.

  Maggie shakes her head. “I’ve never found one. And who even knows if the damn thing works. Probably best if it doesn’t.”

  “We have to try. It’s our only way out of here without attracting attention.”

  “Er… engine?” asks Shock, stealing the words right out of everyone else’s mouths by the looks. He’s not usually the first to speak up, but he’s burning through a lot of firsts today. One more won’t hurt.

  “Earth Engine,” Amiga replies. “Long story. Horror. Worst kind. But maybe we can change the genre…”

  * * *

  In a haze of dismay thick as early morning smog, Shock stands by the window of the server, staring out at the Earth Engine. The sight of it, the unequivocal reality, festers in the brain meats like a bad trip. He’s heard the breaking of the world was not an accident; that sort of rumour has its own life, refuses to be laid to rest even when large corporate interest seeks to quash it. It’s not something Shock dwelt on, having no real relevance to his life, or so he thought.

  It should help that everyone stood here in this server, looking out at the engine, feels just as destabilized. It doesn’t. Shock has no doubt that no one here is at ease with this, not one soul is feeling any comfort, not even those who would have staked their lives on this truth. But they’re not standing here holding yet another thing that could destroy everything in their heads. Not standing here feeling guilt and responsibility and absolute terror. How could he have let it happen? How can he stop it?

  Serene on her web of glowing tubes, Mother Zero watches them watch the engine. He can feel her eyes on him, mini-suns warming his spine. He wants to talk to her direct, ask her to help him understand what he needs to do, because he doesn’t know, even though he’s chosen to do it. Life has never been this complicated. He knows how to run, to hide, to escape. That’s all he knows. He hasn’t the first clue about standing and fighting.

  “How do we get to it?” Volk. Impatient. Sounds comfortable on her. This is a woman who suffers on the wrong end of the patience spectrum.

  Maggie shakes her head.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never known. But Amiga’s right, there has to be a way in and out to the station. It’s obvious the server was built from out there.”

  Shock looks down at Puss, curled around his chest, seemingly content.

  Show me the layout, he says. Like you did before. Maybe we’ll see the way down.

  Puss slides a tentacle into his jack. This time he’s braced for the grid, the underlying reality of his world, but the sheer wealth of information leaking through the interface still takes him by surprise. Through the server walls he sees the station, the Engine, and the innards of the beast, a blueprint with instructions scrolling like rain down a window, trickling droplets of information.

  Fuck, this machine is not a metal carcass; it’s still vibrant, vibrating. Alive in the way machines sometimes are when idle, that sinister static energy warning of great power held in check. Beyond it lies a network of tunnels, delineated in bright shades of green, red and blue. They span the city, more vast than even his wildest imaginings could have conjured and—this is the biggest surprise, though it shouldn’t have been—they lead to other stations, other servers, other engines. So many of them across the Gung’s breadth.

  Is this where they rested when the world was broken? More likely they were left here once the network of servers was finished. Perhaps as a backup plan.
A means to start afresh from nothing if the Gung didn’t pan out, though why you’d rid the earth of its last land standing, he does not know.

  Well this is unexpected, Puss says.

  She’s music in his mind, a background symphony, and he realizes he’s always heard it, heard her. No more so than now. He’s been ignoring her, still refusing to accept a world wherein part of him can still somehow be female. Doing the same to her, in fact, that was done to him over and over, making cracks that have never healed. And for the second time with her, he feels like a selfish shit. Worse. Because he knows how it feels to be rejected. Why can’t he be better? Why can’t he just accept her?

  I’m sorry. I’m trying. It’s just hard. I don’t understand.

  She squeezes his midriff ever so gently. I know. Amiga was quite correct by the way. Bad company will be with us in approximately ten minutes. Twist and his troops are moving fast. The drones follow them. Soon this server will be the only safe place at Mollie’s. Until they find it…

  Oh shit.

  “Can Mother be moved?” he asks Maggie.

  Taken aback, Maggie blinks.

  “Yes, she can. Easily.”

  Still seeing through Puss’s eyes, Shock limps to a place in the server wall that, to any eyes but theirs, seems the same as all the rest. A combination of code sent to an intricate lock hidden in the cracks causes the whole section to uncouple and swing back, revealing a staircase spiralling down toward the platform—rails automatically rising from some hidden enclosure to make safe the descent.

  Amiga strides over and looks down.

  “How the hell…?”

  “Avi vision.”

  She turns, frowning, so he points to his head, to the tentacle snaked beneath his hair.

  “Oh that’s good.”

  He smiles. “I know.”

  Volk shoves her way through the crowd.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” says Amiga. “That engine. Is it the only one?” Volk makes to protest, but Amiga steps in front her. “I need to know. If we manage to contain Emblem and the Queens, we’re essentially bringing down the Corp monopoly. There’ll be a vacuum. A vacuum is a dangerous thing, and there are too many bad people who’d try to fill it. Something needs to be done about that.”

  With a sigh, Volk relents.

  “Fine, but speak fast, Emblem will not be contained for much longer.”

  “Fully compos of that, Volk, it’s in my fucking head,” Shock tells her. Then says to Amiga, “There are dozens of engines abandoned under the Gung. Three of them on route to the Heights.”

  “They all work?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about the network?”

  “Goes everywhere. All across the Gung.”

  “So we could attack the cartels from below? Take their HQs whilst they’re preoccupied,” says Amiga.

  Shock’s astounded, and a touch embarrassed. He hadn’t thought to do something like that. But then, he’s no Cleaner, just a loser with a scrubbed-out drug habit.

  “That’s fucking audacious. I love it. You planning to take out Twist?”

  She looks tempted, but shakes her head.

  “I’ll be with you. You’re going to need all the help you can get.”

  “I’ve got Volk and the big guy.”

  “Petrie. My name is Petrie,” snaps the big guy, looking like an infuriated bald bear. “And he’ll have a strong team from my ship behind him. He’ll be fine.” Amiga still seems unsure, and Petrie asks her, “You’re Twist’s Cleaner, right?”

  “I am.”

  “Then no one knows better than you what he is, or where to hit him hardest. Or would you prefer to keep him around? Pretty sure he’ll finish what he started on your friend there if you don’t deal with him. I have long experience of men like that. They never forget, and they never forgive.”

  Amiga bites her lip, torn, the conflict visible on her face, in her eyes. As is the moment she relents.

  “We need five teams, one for each major player, and we can’t fuck up. We need to come out of this looking all powerful, so none of the minor-league players dares to act.”

  “We’re with you for Twist,” Deuce says, hobbling over between Ravi and Vivid.

  “No way. You’re fucked, Deuce. Shot to fuck in fact. You can’t fight.” Amiga’s expression is this strange combo of anxiety and rage. Shock would bet a serious amount of flim that she has no idea her feelings for Deuce are written all over her face. She’d probably rip it off.

  “No,” Deuce replies, smiling viciously. “But I can hack. What argument you got against that, Amiga?”

  She has precisely zero, and things happen way too quickly after that. Between them, Amiga and Petrie split their 220 battered survivors into five teams plus a tiny group composed of EVaC, Maggie, Mother Zero and anyone too injured to fight. This done, they all leave the server, locking it behind them, and trail down to the platform, into the Engine.

  It starts with ease, filling the tunnel with a feral roar, and they’re off into darkness, into the earth, and none of them talk about what they’re really thinking: how utterly weird it is to be given no option but to use something that destroyed their world in order to try to save it.

  The first of the three stations between Shin District and the Heights takes almost no time at all to reach, and two teams leave together, heading for other stations to pick up other engines. Amiga comes over to Shock before she leaves and slides a gun into the pocket of the blazer Maggie scared up to keep him warm.

  “For the moment it goes wrong, if it does,” she says to him. “And if you can’t, if Breaker’s wrecked your head or anything goes wrong, I have Petrie’s fucking word he’ll do right by you.”

  “Thanks, Amiga.”

  “No sweat, Haunt. If I don’t see you again, I’m glad I didn’t Clean you. I’m glad I got to save you instead. You’re okay.”

  He smiles at that. “You’re not too bad yourself.”

  The engine moves on. Only one more stop before the Heights. Volk and Petrie huddle with their people, discussing tactics for the incursion. Shock sits there like a third freaking wheel, feeling all kinds of useless. He looks around the engine, trying to distract himself and ends up staring at the business end, where one of the land-ship folk stands monitoring the automatic systems. It’s old tech all right, but the computers are bloody powerful. He smiles. Here’s where he can help.

  Hey, Puss, fancy doing a bit of lock picking?

  You quite literally read my mind.

  Cracking the engine’s complex tech systems, they use them to get into Heights systems, stopping to stare, dumbfounded, at the amount of VA crammed into its networks. This security is mind-boggling, and they have to somehow clear a path into Heights and up as high as where Breaker’s being kept, somewhere on the top three floors. Getting to him will be even harder, but that can wait.

  An hour later, the final and most vulnerable group leaves, heading for a safe house offered by Volk. Done with the initial picking of Heights locks and sporting the accompanying headache breaking so much VA so quickly provides, Shock watches out of the windows as they load up EVaC and Mother into another Engine. Mother looks up, seemingly aware of his gaze. Her pale-yellow eyes, soft as primroses, pin him in place. Deceptive shade that. It’s not soft at all when you’re caught in its grip, but neon bright as her tattoos.

  I don’t know what to do, he sends tentatively and, to his surprise, she responds.

  No one does. Just do what you can.

  The effort it takes a Patient Zero to speak without the interference of virad jingles is immense, and means her words strike their target clean. From the satisfaction in her smile, he knows this is what she intended. She wanted to help. How has he never known people like this before? How has he never known people could be like this? He smiles back, raising his hand to wave goodbye. Maggie waves for her, which makes him smile a little more. There’s so much between those two, it’s a beautiful thing to witness.

&nb
sp; It occurs to him that, in these past forty-eight hours, he’s smiled more, and more genuinely, than he has for years. And here he is, in the deepest shit he’s ever encountered, heading for certain death with missing fingertips, missing teeth, broken ribs, and half his skin C-genned together. Happiness is clearly unpredictable. Or else he’s just a complete fucking weirdo. Either seems good.

  When they reach Heights, Shark’s waiting for them, swimming elliptic shapes around the bay. There’s no server here, only an elevator. Petrie comes to stand beside Shock. He looks stressed, Shock can’t really blame him. He’s not exactly relaxed down here himself. Every now and then it occurs that they are under fucking ground and his head goes blank, shivery at the edges. Under any other circumstances, Shock would be hella anxious to leave.

  “Can you get us in? Volk was sure you could,” the big guy says, reaching out to run a hand over the elevator doors as if he might be able to get them in via sheer will power. This guy would probably try.

  “I already have.” Shock leans to press the elevator call button. “We’ve got access to one of the staff shoots and codes to lock access to the rest. Breaker is on one of the topmost floors, not the highest but definitely a penthouse. There’s no way I can get in through the front door, but I can crack staff access with Puss’s assistance.”

  The elevator doors slide open but Shock holds them up a moment longer.

  “There are residential shoots, and I didn’t have time to get locks for those, so be prepared for guards. And I’m with Amiga on the Harmonys. Li’s an Archeologist. If she’s been looking for me, chances are she’ll have picked up Breaker’s communication and come straight here. There’s no way to be ready for the Harmonys, just try and stay alive.”

  “Sure thing.” Petrie inclines his head at Shark, who’s still circling the station. “You not bringing the killing machine? We could use it.”

  “Not at the moment. If Puss or I are injured, our connection to him will help us hang on long enough to do what needs to be done. If he got injured too…”

  Petrie nods. “Got it. But you understand we’re at your back? We’ll get you in and out alive.”