by Kim Knox
She pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. When had she last left her flat? Three days ago? Four? The rush of solving the simulacrum problem had caught her up and she’d been unwilling, unable to focus on anything else. She’d barely washed—Paul had been lucky to kiss her other self, not the true one—and food had been an afterthought.
Vyn pushed her aching body up from her sagging sofa. She hadn’t fallen into work so intensely for years. Her brain worked in odd ways. Always had. The last grey light of the day cut through the front room’s only window, picking out the swirling motes of dust in the air.
A new habit made her gaze dart to corners and shadows. Something about her flat had her twitchy now, her nerves alive with paranoia. She frowned at the cracked ceiling. Her main suspect for her new trait was white-fyre fumes from the illegal lab in the flat above. She needed to upgrade her filters.
Pulling in air made her very aware of her own stink. Not that washing would exactly improve her scent. Toiletries in S-District tended to run to industrial flavours.
Vyn dragged her body to her small shower room, took a hammer to the pipework until a reluctant trickle started to fall from the showerhead, stripped and stepped under the tepid water. With a gobbet of soap stuck to her palm, the stink of carbolic rose through the damp air as she scrubbed the dirt from her skin and hair.
All too soon, with a loud clank and shudder of metal pipes, the trickle of water died. Shivering, Vyn grabbed her thin towels from the rack and wrapped them around her body. She remembered other times. Times long in her past where hot water had been plentiful. And sweet-smelling soap. And a bath…with bubbles. Those times had long passed.
A quick brush of her teeth followed and Vyn avoided the rust-spotted mirror over the sink. After the stunning beauty of the simulacrum, she didn’t want the reality of her own scarred face staring back at her.
Vyn dragged on clean clothes, her gaze darting over the shadows of her bedroom. Nothing moved. Nothing. But still… “You’re crazy, Vyn,” she muttered. Her stomach growled a belated reminder of how hungry she was and it pulled her thoughts away from her nervous paranoia. She pinched the bridge of her nose. It was time to move. She needed it. The burst of adrenalin, the frankly crazy encounter with Paul, the fear of being caught, her unrelenting paranoia had her body twitchy. More twitchy.
Coffee. A fat cup of it. And a pastry. She squinted into the dying light. Alec would be closing his shop soon. If she ran, she’d get the last of his baked goods and a fresh pot to herself. That was worth the effort of risking the increasing dark and the prowling skanks.
Vyn tucked the simulacrum case into the back band of her trousers, grabbed her jacket, disengaged her security and banged the heavy door shut behind her. Gear hissed as the protecting security ran across her closed door. It was almost lost in the yowls of dogs, shrieking children and the low industrial whine of her building’s network. The stink of too many people crammed into a building hit her again, odours she couldn’t—and didn’t want to—name thickening the air. In her flat, with her filters, she could sometimes forget she lived in S-District. Her fantasy ended when she opened the door.
The battered, filthy walls shimmered, rippling with the energy leaking from the flats surrounding hers. It raised the hair on her neck, but with so much interference, it also made it hard for those hunting her to trace her glamour back to her cramped flat.
She pulled up her hood, deliberately shadowing her scarred face. Her fingers curled back into her jacket pocket and found the grip of her electro-shock. She pressed her thumb to the smooth ceramic case. Her heart thudded. It probably wasn’t her best plan to be heading out into the cold-world so close to dark. Not at all. But she could almost taste the coffee, brewed from beans smuggled in from across the corporate border.
Vyn took to the wide concrete stairs, the damp swell of air bringing with it the sour stink of piss. She scanned her way out of the building, the DNA of one of her neighbours useful in confusing her trail. The icy winds rattled the barricaded lower windows, and cold bit deep into her exposed face.
Shadows moved, avoiding the weak glow of the flickering streetlamps. Vyn’s senses strained, every part of her heightened and aware. Her boots moved sure and quick over the broken pavement, the distant shine of light from the short row of shops a hundred metres ahead. It wasn’t far. She told herself that over and over. But in the growing gloom, with the first of the night-smog wreathing in smooth, pale brown wisps around the streetlamps, it felt too far.
Vyn pulled in quickened breaths. She was over halfway. Almost there.
The clatter of metal off to her left made her start and the electro-shock in her hand jerked against the lining of her pocket. The acrid stink of burnt synthetic whipped around her. She’d lived in S-District for seven years but she still managed to burn her way through her jackets.
Calls echoed across the street, gang signs, members watching her, judging her, and in the distance a low factory rumble ran a tremor through the uneven pavement. Vyn hadn’t grown up here. That thought went with her every time she risked leaving her building. She was too aware that she stood out. Not just her scars, but her accent, her education. Her life before S-District had been one of privilege and luxury…until they’d caught her once too often with illegal glamour. S-District was the good choice. Others had not been so lucky.
Metal crashed in the black void of an alley to her left and she increased her pace, her boots thudding hard against the flagstones. A few more minutes to Alec’s coffee shop. She was not thinking at that moment about her trip back.
Hairs pricked on the back of her neck and she cursed the restriction of her hood. Someone was following her. The pattern of their footsteps fell out of time with her own, the beat echoing under her boots. Her fingers flexed around her electro-shock. She willed her muscles loose, ready. She should have stayed in her flat, reheated instant—
“Bran-seven!” A male voice. Too close.
She whipped around, her arm jerking forward, and slammed the electro-shock into the man’s hip. His scream ripped the air, shrouded by the stink of her burnt jacket pocket. He dropped to the pavement. Light cut across his face. “Ossian?”
Chapter Two
Vyn swore and pulled the twitching man to his feet. She threw her arm around him and staggered the remaining metres to Alec’s coffee shop. “What were you thinking?” She scanned the darkness, too aware that his scream would call to the skanks hiding in the shadows. “Don’t creep up on me!”
Ossian’s jaw worked but no sound came out.
“Fight it.” Vyn gritted her teeth, having to drag him along with her. The light from the shop striped the pavement, and its closing metal shutter system groaned. Damn. “Alec, be open.”
She slammed her shoulder against the door and it gave way. With Ossian’s gangly weight unsteadying her, she lurched into a table. The distinctive whine of a charging electro-shock rifle snapped her head around. Alec glared at them, his thick fingers far too close to the trigger.
“Bran-seven?” His heavy brows furrowed. “What are you doing out at this time?”
“Coffee?” She let Ossian slump onto a battered couch, pushed back her hood and ran her shaking hand through her hair.
Alec muttered something under his breath. He set the security on the door and deactivated his rifle. “You risk your life for coffee?”
She grinned. “What? So do you.”
His gaze narrowed on her, but a smile touched his lips. “I can brew you a fresh pot and warm you up the last of the chocolate cinnamon bread.” He plodded behind the wide counter. “But that’s all.”
“Thank you. That’s more than enough.”
Vyn sank onto the couch opposite Ossian. He’d stopped twitching—that was a good sign—but pain still drew heavy lines over his thin face. She’d have to wait until he pulled himself together to find out why he’d rushed up to her on the street. It was practically suicidal. He was just lucky that her electro-shock packed a non-lethal charge.<
br />
She’d known Ossian for three years, since they’d collaborated on getting into one of the middle Mind tiers. He had a genius for breaking portals. Ossian wasn’t his cold-world name. It had appeared somewhere in the past, as had her name of Bran-seven. Skanks had quickly run out of true Fomorian names and so they’d simply plundered Celtic mythology.
Vyn offered Alec a smile as he brought over a tray loaded with a coffeepot, mugs, plates, forks and a heaped plate of chocolate bread. Her stomach growled in anticipation.
She poured coffee and milk into the two mugs and pushed one of them towards her friend. “Ossian? What was so urgent?”
Ossian’s slim fingers closed around the white mug and he stared into the pale liquid. “They’re disappearing.” He lifted the mug to his lips and took a gulp. “I thought I was too late.”
Vyn broke off a quarter of the chocolate bread, dropped it onto a smaller plate and found her fork. “Too late? Who’s disappearing?”
Ossian had grown up in S-District…and he tended to be a touch paranoid.
The cake-bread melted in her mouth, warm, heavy with dark chocolate and spiced with a hint of cinnamon. She waved her fork. “And I’m sorry for shocking you. But you grabbed me from behind on the street…”
Ossian sat forward, his face flushed. “The Corporation is pulling in Fomorians.”
The Corporation dictated all their lives, had taken a very personal intervention in her own life, and its reach stretched beyond Britain. It was eager to use its influence to gain yet more power. It had a commodity the other hungry mega-conglomerates that ruled the planet wanted, needed. The Mind. A system of virtual tiers and hidden, exclusive Halls that the Corporation protected with a ruthless efficiency. And one that Fomorians like her just itched to break.
Vyn let out a soft sigh and picked up her mug. She watched Ossian through the rising steam. Today he had more than a touch of delusion. “They haul in our gear most of the time, strip us of the glamour we create and use it themselves. It’s what they do to survive.”
“No. It’s like the time before, before you came to S-District. Six, maybe seven years ago.” His knuckles whitened around his mug. “Not just a short stint away in a cold-world detention centre for tier violation. These Fomorians were properly vanished, as in wiped. No trace.”
A ripple of unease prickled down her spine and she couldn’t hold down a shiver. Her friend from college had vanished. One day Liam was there, attending lectures, hanging out at the student bar…the next gone. His room was occupied by another student who had his name, looked vaguely like him, had the same courses…but the real Liam had vanished. Vyn had doubted her own sanity as no one questioned his disappearance and replacement. She still doubted it. The rush of her thoughts around that time were blurred, indistinct. Then her whole world had blown up when the life-ruling Corporation dumped her in S-District.
Her fork circled her plate over and over, the scrape of the prongs breaking her thoughts before she laid the fork down. Bloody irritating habit. But she couldn’t stop it. “And no one else has taken their place?”
Ossian frowned at her. “How do you mean?”
Vyn took a sip of her coffee, the heat swelling through her and easing some of her nerves. They hadn’t replaced the missing. Ossian would’ve been full of the conspiracy of it. And she’d never shared her personal past. None of them did. “Who’s gone?”
“Top-level people. Balor, Cian, Ogma. Those are the ones I know are missing.” He blew out a breath. “And I thought you.”
Vyn speared more of the crumbling cake bread. “I was holed up.”
“You were nowhere. Unreachable.” Ossian snagged a thick piece of the cake bread and let himself sink back into the battered couch cushions. “It’s nice to see you’re still with us.”
“I make you money.”
“Yes, you do.”
Vyn held her mug tight in cold fingers. Liam had been…replaced seven years before. She had to believe that. She hadn’t imagined it. “So what happened last time, with the disappearances?”
“We lost maybe ten people, other groups more. The Corporation asset-stripped their gear. Got a lot of the legal glamour floating through the tiers now. They never came back.”
“Part of a refresh?” She almost winced at the memory of some of the bad legal she’d encountered. “After all, legal glamour is far from perfect.” In the corner of her eye, Alec busied himself, tidying up for the night.
“More than that. Yes, a refresh, but—” he sat forward and his gaze darted around the silent, empty coffee shop, “—the last time, after the disappearances, the CEO—Lucas March-Goodman was acting head then—made a grab for another industry. Took the chemical parks owned by the Warrick-Alder Group in old Germany.”
“What’s that got to do with the Fomorians?”
“Simulacrum.”
Vyn almost choked. “That’s a myth!”
“Is it? The Corporation lives in daily fear of its discovery.” Ossian wagged a bony finger at her. “The disappeared ones? They were all working on it.”
“Every Fomorian skank claims to be working on it, or to have it. It’s like our own philosopher’s stone. The thing we all crave, the pinnacle of our abilities, our science…but completely impossible.”
Ossian was her friend, but she wasn’t going to admit anything to him. Not until the kinks were worked out. With it she could do anything, be anyone inside the Mind. Simulacrum would make her so wealthy it dried her tongue.
She took another sip of coffee. “You see conspiracy everywhere.”
He tugged the sleeves of his jacket over his wrists, an old nervous tick. “With the Corporation’s permission, every person, every company in the world plays and works through a tier—which is why they want to identify each true individual. Simulacrum would take that away.” The sudden light of a zealot hacker burned in his eyes. “To open-source it—”
“Would mean they’d have to shut the tiers and you’d make zero money. They can’t trust who you are? Everything collapses.” She gave him a sharp smile. “How would this be a good thing?”
“I know. I’m crazy. It’s in the blood.” He took more cake bread. “It wouldn’t be good. Still, it’d be a nice kick in the eye to the CEO.”
Vyn took the chance to pull him away from his favourite topic, how much he hated Lucas March-Goodman. “Speaking of eyes, I have a backlog.”
While she had coffee and Alec’s cake bread, she’d sort out some pressing business. The simulacrum had dominated her time and she needed money. She had glamour to move. Ossian was also her man for that. It was a safe place to discuss it. They bought Alec’s discretion with upgrades to his glamour. He was an Adonis on the lower-levels of the Mind, a classically handsome man, with the sleek perfection of an athlete. Few rivalled him.
With the last drain of her mug and the pot empty, Vyn’s business was done. Ossian wangled an invite from Alec to crash out on his couch, an invite that also extended to her. But with the simulacrum case burning a hole through her shirt, she didn’t feel safe. Ossian might be her friend and business partner, but that didn’t mean she trusted him. Not really.
“You’re sure?” Alec’s meaty hand wavered over the security settings. “It’s full dark. You’ve been here a while now.”
“I have this.” She pushed the head of her electro-shock through the cauterised tear in her jacket pocket. “It’s a couple of hundred metres. I’ll be fine.”
“You’d better be.” He ran his other hand over his thinning scalp. “I need you to upgrade my hair. It’s glitching.”
Vyn grinned at him. “Next thing I’ll work on.” The outer detector was clear, no blips indicating body heat appearing on the display above the long security panel. “Time to go.”
Alec released the door and Vyn slipped through the opening gap. The rush of sudden cold caught her breath, a full shiver hitting her. She yanked up her hood and broke into a run. Icy air burned in her lungs. Calls burst out around her, shadows moved, on the st
reet, over low roofs, against the taller buildings.
Her heart thudded, the heat and pain in her muscles scaring her. It’d been a long time since she’d made the mistake of risking the dark. Something moved under the weak, flickering light of the streetlamp ahead of her.
Vyn yanked out her electro-shock. A form leapt, and she jabbed the device hard against a bony hip. She dodged his flailing arms, his scream ripping the air as he fell to the hard pavement. She ran on, her mouth dry, her heart drumming. The familiar lit front of her building was only metres away.
She slammed herself against the metal, the scan on the back of her hand smacking against the plate. The door gave way. She stumbled, caught her balance and edged through. A hard kick and the door shut. But she couldn’t relax. Safety lay in her flat, not in the open foyer and stairwells of her building.
Vyn took to the stairs two at a time. The ripple of energy chased along the walls of the corridor, running interference with her thoughts. As she broke the security on her door, she made a pledge with herself not to drink so much coffee. It opened and she was in, the solid reinforced wood slamming back into the door frame with a satisfying thunk.
She fell back against it, her chest tight, her legs like water. “No more late night coffee runs.”
“There you are.”
Her heart jumped to her throat as adrenalin rushed through her. There, sitting on her battered couch, was Paul.
Chapter Three
Vyn scrubbed at her eyes. It had to be a side effect of the simulacrum. She’d denied her brain the extra stimulation, and now it was providing it in the form of a visual hallucination. And auditory. She’d most definitely heard him speak.
She calmed her breathing. The sharp injection of caffeine and the surge of adrenalin had to have affected her. She opened her eyes.
He was still there. Fuck.
“Surprised I broke into your flat?” He jabbed a thumb towards the window. The frame had distorted in one corner, the lamp on the table beneath set to the wrong side. “You’re only five floors up, Bran-seven.”
