The Sapphire Shadow

by James Wake

  “When they started doing what?”

  “Something that requires an exciting amount of electricity,” Tess said. “They put a huge battery array in that building a few years back, but even that’s not enough. See the cables connected to those other buildings?”

  Nadia followed her finger, blinking a bit when the glasses lit up the connections in her vision. More cables, sweeping down from the seventeenth floor to lower buildings all down the street.

  “Tapping off every neighbor they can,” Tess said. “They wait until nightfall, then wham. Power draw out the ass.”

  “And I suppose you’ve discovered what’s going on in there?”

  “Well, judging by the amount of money being dumped into that office, something amazing. I can’t scrape any network traffic, though, not unless someone plugs me in from inside.”

  “I see.”

  Several long moments passed, both of them staring at the bright lights of the seventeenth floor until the show stopped.

  “Well?” Tess said. “You said you wanted some high-profile heisting. A file dump from in there is a payout in the millions, easy.”

  “Nice try,” Nadia said, squeezing Tess’s arm. “You just want to find out what’s in there.”

  “You don’t?” Tess said, pawing at the back of her own neck with her artificial hand.

  Of course I do.

  “I’m right about the info being worth plenty,” Tess said.

  “Mmm. And what will I be doing while you commit your daring information heist?”

  Tess grimaced and sighed. “Pretty sure there’s no jewelry in there, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Pity,” Nadia said. “Count me out.”

  “Maybe that might keep you from going off the reservation again?” Tess said, her tone sharper. “Besides, you owe me.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I am at your disposal,” Tess said, in a rude mockery of Nadia’s voice. “Remember?”

  Well played. She was too proud of Tess to be annoyed. “Very well,” Nadia said, sighing loudly. “Mystery lab it is.”

  “I knew you’d come around.” Tess bumped against her, bouncing on her heels. “I’ve got a bunch of stuff back at the office for us to go over.”

  Nadia nodded, still hanging on to Tess’s arm and thinking about Tess going under. Lying on an operating table, arm strapped down and marked with a sharp line where the incisions would start. The whining buzz of a bone saw.

  She squeezed that arm tightly again, and they stood there together, watching the lights of the city until the observation deck closed.

  Chapter Six: Casing

  “Miss?”

  Nadia blinked once and adjusted her glasses. A uniformed man stepped close in front of her, not a blue police uniform but the severe black of Auktoris Private Security.

  “Yes?” she said, doing her best to look distracted.

  “No loitering. Private property,” he said, muffled through the black Plexiglas shell of his helmet. She glanced past him, eyes wandering up the building across the street to a mess of cables stretching through the air. All attached at the seventeenth floor, where she had watched flickering lights only the night before.

  “So sorry. Lost in my thoughts, you know?”

  He straightened up. This was of course the moment when he would order her to show her hands, to produce any and all identification on her person. She couldn’t see his face, but she imagined he was glaring at her.

  “I’ve been having a rough few days,” Nadia continued, flashing him a tender, hurt smile. “My boyfriend and I, we…”

  Immediately the officer’s bearing changed, faint bits of light from his HUD visible through the mask. She produced the beginnings of tears and wiped at her eyes under the glasses.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean any trespass.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, holding a hand to the side of his helmet. “I can call in an HR agent if you need help.”

  It took her a moment. Of course, the black eye—not quite concealed under her makeup. That would push the little ruse a bit too far.

  “Ah, well…that’s very kind of you, but…” she said, backing away.

  “Please. It’s no trouble. They can take a report and open a case for you.”

  “It’s not quite what you’re thinking,” she said, silently scolding herself. She might as well have told him she’d fallen down some stairs. “I appreciate the concern, though.”

  “Mmm,” he said, somehow looking skeptical through his helmet. “Might help to stay with your parents for a bit?”

  Nadia was very proud of the fact that she did not scowl and curse him out. Instead she produced another smile. “Thank you, Officer.”

  “Don’t mention it. Just move along, please.”

  She slipped back into the steady stream of people drifting along the sidewalk. It was cool and crisp on the street, even in broad daylight, urging her to shove her hands deep into the pockets of her trench coat.

  Her glasses scanned everything in front of her. No fancy vision modes, only a direct link that greedily kept everything she saw.

  Tess’s voice crept into her ears. “What was all that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About the boyfriend.”

  “It got him to leave me alone, didn’t it?” Nadia said, wiping away the remnants of her tears. Her makeup was probably ruined.

  “Oh, my God, are you actually crying?”

  “One day you and I need to have a talk about these things called men.”

  “No, thank you. Not interested.”

  “Did you get what you needed?” Nadia asked.

  “Kind of. I wouldn’t mind a few more shots of the loading docks down that side street.”

  Nadia glanced that way, pretending to adjust her hair. Several black-clad guards were loitering there, looking like they wanted any excuse to be less bored.

  “Don’t know if that’s feasible,” Nadia said.

  “Yeah, I can see,” Tess said. “It’s fine.”

  “Private property…ridiculous. I was across the street the whole time.”

  “That was nothing. If you didn’t look so…you know, you, they’d probably be taking you in for trespassing right now,” Tess said.

  “Trespassing?” Nadia said. “I was on a public street.”

  “It’s public the same way I tell people online that I’m a man,” Tess said.

  Although Nadia felt a small leftover urge to argue, she knew Tess was right. Auktoris Global Funds owned everything from the walls to the sea, whether or not the paperwork said so.

  “That’s the most fucked-up thing about this city,” Tess said. “Everyone acts like it’s okay because we’re not outside the walls, but if you step back for a second and, you know, whole context, it’s—”

  Nadia barely heard her. “You tell people you’re a man?”

  “What? Uh…sure. Sometimes”

  Nadia could almost hear her shrugging, scrambling to change the subject. “In what context exactly?”

  “So people won’t act like that guard did. I thought he was gonna ask you out.”

  “Yes, a close call. But it worked. Good thing I’m so…how did you put it?”

  “White. I meant white. And rich looking,” Tess groaned. “And, you know…conventionally attractive.”

  “You are correct. I can be quite irresistible.”

  Tess’s loud, mocking snort rang in her ears.

  “You disagree?”

  “No, I guess I don’t disagree,” Tess said.

  “I’m a bit surprised to hear that tone coming from my prom date.”

  “What? More like your prom hostage. Not fair.”

  Feedback screamed through Nadia’s earplugs. The sidewalk was crowded here. More faceless APS officers, assisted by the occasional city cop, had cuffed about a dozen protesters.
A Dome forced the last of them to their knees as she passed, their heads shrouded in rough, dark sacks.

  She chanced a look down at the discarded signs she was treading on. Static flickered in the lenses of her glasses, but she could still read them. One begged for the return of sick days, another said no future but debt. The last one she saw read Can't live without a living wage.

  “Eyes up!” A Dome yelled at her. “Keep moving!”

  Like everyone else, Nadia shuffled along under the swarm of drones clustered overhead.

  Tess’s voice returned. “Ugh, that was stupid of them. Can you hear me?”

  “You’re back,” Nadia said, dipping her chin closer to the collar of her black turtleneck, although she knew it did nothing to improve the communications feed. Had to work on that habit. “Can you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “What was that noise?” Nadia didn’t dare look back over her shoulder. Everyone walking around her was cringing and hurrying their steps.

  “Jamming. Magnetic acoustics. Probably one of those drones above you,” Tess said. “Anything to break up a protest.”

  Nadia’s teeth were numb. She drew her right hand out of her coat pocket, then opened and closed her fingers a few times until feeling returned. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised about you presenting as male on occasion, considering what you wore to prom.”

  “You’ll never let that go, will you?” Tess said. “That was the deal; you forced me to go with you, and I got to pick my outfit.”

  “I did not come anywhere near forcing you to go,” Nadia said, still making her way down the packed sidewalk.

  “Yes, you did! ‘I refuse to go stag alone, so we are going stag together!’ Those were your exact words!”

  Nadia bit her lip for a moment. “I’m sorry, did you have a prior engagement?” she asked, knowing the answer.

  Tess sighed. “That’s not the point, and you know it. Maybe you shouldn’t have dumped your boyfriend the day before prom.”

  “That breakup was well deserved,” Nadia said. “I had fun with you that night, though.”

  “Did you?” Tess said, hollow and mean.

  Ah, right. It had been fun, dancing and laughing and sneaking out together into the dark halls beyond the dance floor, sharing sips of something vile from a flask.

  Right up until the very end, when Tess had finally summoned the courage to say some things they’d both known for a long time but never acknowledged. Nadia had retorted with something along the lines of, “I’m flattered, but…”

  She couldn’t remember the precise words, because she didn’t want to try—they would be eclipsed by the crystal-clear recollection of how good it had felt, how fun it had been, at the time, to crush that pathetic little heart. To condescendingly pat Tess on the shoulder and tell her how much she would always treasure their friendship.

  Disgusting. Nadia turned a corner and laid her eyes on the other end of the conversation, across the street and sitting in a flashy and clean fast-food joint.

  Even from here, Nadia saw how red her face was.

  “Oh,” Tess said, suddenly sitting up straight and pulling down her purple hood. “I didn’t realize you were already here.”

  “I’ll just be a moment.”

  The streetlight took forever to change. Nadia was stuck watching cars quietly hum by, their sounds dwarfed by the occasional hoverbike. Everyone standing around her had either the flicker of retinal implants or glasses concealing similar functions, even the little girl firmly holding her mother’s hand. For once, Nadia looked just like them.

  “Forget I said anything about the prom stuff, okay?” Tess said.

  “I brought it up.” Nadia paused, delicately choosing her words. “My fault.”

  “We’re cool, right?”

  “I sincerely hope so.”

  She crossed the street and walked inside, scrunching her nose up at the place. A display above the door read cultured charcuterie, a higher class of meat! Normally she wouldn’t be caught dead in such an establishment, would never even consider setting foot inside.

  Tess had invaded a corner booth and kept it all to herself, with several boxes of food arrayed in front of her.

  “Fish?” Nadia raised her eyebrows. “Some special occasion I’m not aware of?

  “It’s synthetic.”

  “Ah.” Nadia slid into the booth, taking a seat across from her. “I should have guessed.”

  Tess was scooping rice into her mouth with chopsticks, holding the box up close to her lips. She went at it with an urgency that brought a tear to Nadia’s eye.

  Perhaps you should have requested a trough?

  She didn’t say it. Years ago, she would have, would have done it without even thinking.

  “I bought you lunch.” Tess handed her a plastic-wrapped box containing a complete meal neatly divided into compartments, the cover proclaiming it to be an all-natural feast meant for the ancient hunters within us all. A stamp on the side read, “Omniplant Manufacturing Services.”

  Nadia made a sound like she’d stepped in something unpleasant. Food, generally, was not something she enjoyed. Endured, more like. Put up with.

  Tess quickly emptied her box then loudly slurped from a cup of something thick and beige. After several long sucks through her straw, she offered the cup to Nadia. The straw was chewed flat, crinkled with tooth prints.

  “Banana smoothie?”

  Not even if I was dying of thirst.

  “No, thank you,” Nadia said.

  “Your loss.” She made a noble effort to finish the thing off in one massive slurp.

  “What is banana anyway?”

  Tess looked distant for a moment. “The banana is an edible fruit, produced by plants of the genus Musa,” she read. “Typically elongated and curved, it grows in clusters. Extinct in the wild for years, the banana today is primarily a lab crop and…”

  Although Nadia had tasted many banana-flavored things in her life, she wasn’t actually curious. She waved at Tess to stop. “This isn’t going to be as simple as last time.”

  “Mmm.” Tess nodded, loudly finishing off her smoothie. “Yeah, I was a little worried watching you. Shouldn’t be a problem for you to get in, though.”

  Nadia raised an eager eyebrow. “Is that so?”

  “Sure. I’ve got an idea I think you’re gonna like. I’ll show you when we get back.”

  Nadia took off her glasses, then pinched the bridge of her nose and let her eyes wander. The restaurant, if you could call it that, was nothing but tables and booths and a row of vending machines against one wall. What few patrons there were kept to themselves, huddled over their food, glasses lit-up.

  One of the vending-machine displays flickered for a split second. Nadia could swear she saw a cartoon cat winking at her in the static.

  “You sounded like that silly cat earlier,” Nadia said.

  “Huh?” Tess blinked a few times. “Cheshire?”

  “He’s always going on about fascism and public rights, isn’t he?”

  “They’re not wrong,” Tess said. “Would be nice if, you know, they actually did something about it instead of just hacking billboards.”

  “I suppose leadership and direction are hard things for an anonymous collective to come to terms with.”

  “Exactly!” Tess pounded the table with her prosthetic hand, shaking what was left of her meal. “Sorry. For years I’ve been saying you can’t crowdsource social movements. History shows somebody has to step up and do work in the real world.”

  “And here I thought you majored in something useful.”

  “Getting everyone to consider critical thinking to be ‘economically unviable,’” Tess said, making air quotes, “was one of the greatest psy-ops victories ever achieved against the masses.”

  Nadia leaned back in her seat. “You must be so fun at parties.”

 
Tess sighed long and loud, pushing her empty food boxes away. “Back to work?”

  “I’ll meet you there. I have to stop home for a moment.”

  “Aw, what? You’re my ride. Don’t make me call a cab. Come on, I’ve never even seen your place.”

  “I’ve never seen your place.”

  “My place is a single room for a recliner. The toilet and sink are also in that same room. Somehow I don’t think that’s what your place looks like.”

  Nadia strongly considered forgetting the whole errand. They were only clothes. She could always buy more. But doing that felt silly, cowardly for some reason.

  “Fine,” Nadia said, scowling all the while. “Not a word, though. I mean it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  * * *

  Technically it wasn’t called Auktoris Global Headquarters.

  Technically it was the Auktoris Regional Superstructure, a joint venture of Omniplant Construction Products and AlphaKiv Robotics, brought to you by the CAZ Investment Supergroup.

  Everyone in the city simply called it “The Structure.”

  It sprawled for blocks, a city within a city. Vast open archways led into the various zones—all cheap commerce down here, tacky aspirational luxuries for the tourists and hoi polloi.

  Tess stared up the side of the tower, her mouth hanging slightly open.

  Just as bad as the tourists, Nadia thought.

  “You…you’re joking, right?” Tess said. “We’re going shopping, aren’t we?”

  “Are you coming or not?”

  Nadia slipped into the flood of people pouring into the building, keeping her head down and her hands in her pockets. The moment she crossed under the arch, she felt it—those nauseous prickles under her skin, the lump in her throat. She used to tell herself it was the bombardment of light and sounds and the crush of thousands and thousands of ravenous consumers.

  Tess shoved her way to Nadia’s side, catching up quickly enough. “Ugh, the ads in here!” she said, waving her hands in front of her face.

  There was a reason Nadia had put her glasses away. “You act like you’ve never been here before.”

  “It’s been years,” Tess said, still staring up at the terraced levels of the shopping mall, which stretched upward for at least a dozen stories.