“Alright,” JD said. “How do we get in?”
“Maintenance. Oldest trick in the book.”
“Oldest and most obvious,” JD muttered to himself, but he watched carefully as the restaurant kept spinning. His view shifted incrementally until he could see the maintenance access alleyway squished between the southeastern building and the high cement wall of the outer perimeter. A white van sat parked beside four dumpsters overflowing with garbage.
The waiter arrived with their food and drinks on a large tray. He placed the food in the middle of the table, and set the drinks down carefully, placing Soo-hyun’s three whiskeys as far from Khoder as he was able.
JD said, “Thanks,” to the waiter’s receding figure, and took a sip of his stout—hints of coffee and chocolate above the tang of hops.
Khoder drained his glass immediately and started crunching loudly on his ice while Soo-hyun reached into their bag and removed a digital SLR with a compact ultrazoom lens. The camera’s black casing was scuffed and scratched, and a crust of brownish gunk had built up over the shutter-release button.
“Haven’t seen a stand-alone camera in years,” JD said, but Soo-hyun wasn’t listening.
JD and Khoder dug into the food while Soo-hyun made some adjustments on the rear of the camera, raised the device to their eye, and started snapping. When they were done they keyed the camera’s screen and inspected the images displayed there.
“Got a decent shot of the van’s number plate,” they said. “Can you get the driver’s address?”
“Of fucking course,” Khoder said dismissively, bits of shredded chicken launching from his mouth.
Soo-hyun stared dead-eyed at Khoder until he stopped chewing and sat forward in his chair.
He wiped his mouth then pointed at Soo-hyun’s camera: “Look at that piece of shit van. If it was a corporate cleaning service the van would be newer; that shit’s private. Probably some poor bastard contracted to do the work for less than shit pay. It’ll be his van, mortgaged out the ass; he’ll be on the registration.”
Soo-hyun nodded slightly, seemingly satisfied. “Okay, good.” They poured all three whiskeys into one glass and put it on the floor beneath the sheer black curtains, pulled back from the window and bundled up beside the chair. They dropped the curtain into the drink, and looked up at JD. “We need to do it tomorrow night.”
JD choked on a piece of calamari. “What?”
“It has to be tomorrow.” Soo-hyun knocked on the window with a knuckle and pointed to Songdo Stadium. “You know what tomorrow night is, right?” JD stared. “Biggest sporting event in the world?”
“The Olympics?” JD asked, dubious.
“The fucking World Cup Grand Final.”
“That’s happening here?”
“Fuck, bro, even I knew that,” Khoder said, “and I hardly leave the café.”
JD shrugged.
“You uncultured shit,” Soo-hyun said, not unkindly.
“It doesn’t matter what it is,” JD said; “we need more time.”
“Whatever security they normally have at the rampartment complex, tomorrow night it’ll be halved. Fuck, the city’s had to borrow police from Seoul just to cover the game.”
“We need more time,” JD repeated.
“What have you said about the job? Actually spoken out loud? You had to talk to Captain Fuck-Bro here—was that all in person?”
“I said something in-game,” JD admitted.
“And on the street before,” Soo-hyun added. “How long do you think it’ll take for them to piece it together? Everywhere there’s a microphone, they’re listening; everywhere there’s surveillance, they’re watching. We spend a few days casing the joint, and when we finally go for it, we’ll walk right into a pair of handcuffs.”
“Shit,” JD said; they weren’t wrong.
“Can you get the cleaner’s address by morning?” they asked Khoder.
“Give me my phone and I’ll get it fucking now.”
“So, you’re good with the timeframe?” Soo-hyun asked him.
Khoder picked his nose and wiped it on the tablecloth. “Fuck, bro. Sure.”
Soo-hyun turned to JD. “I already gave you building layouts and all the rest—what more do you need?”
“Time,” JD said, but even he heard his lack of conviction.
“We go tomorrow night, time it so we leave the compound right when the game ends, get lost in the crowds.”
JD stared out the window, looking first at the stadium, then at Lee’s enclave. He grabbed his drink and downed the whole thing, stout so thick he wanted to chew.
“Fine,” he said.
Khoder grinned lopsided and Soo-hyun just nodded.
“You’ll see; it’ll all work out.”
“Tomorrow,” JD said, matter-of-factly.
“Tomorrow. You got your plastic containers?”
“Always,” JD said.
“You should box the rest of this food up, no point letting it go to waste.”
“My shout, after all,” JD said, not even wanting to know how much this “planning dinner” was going to set him back. He took the containers from his bag and poured the rest of the chicken and calamari into two separate boxes, then dumped the three small bowls of complimentary kimchi into another.
Soo-hyun took a battered silver Zippo lighter from the ankle of their boot, flicked it open with a metallic chank, and slammed it closed.
“Is that Dad’s lighter?” JD asked.
“Mom said I could have it.”
“It wasn’t hers to give.”
Soo-hyun flicked it open again and lit it with a quick, smooth movement. They put the flame to the curtain—now soaked with whiskey, capillary action carrying the flammable liquid through the entire length of fabric. With a soft whoosh the fire began to climb the curtain.
They flicked the lighter closed and held it out to JD. “Yours if you want it.”
JD just shook his head, mouth hanging open as he watched the flames race up the curtain and lick at the ceiling. “No, thanks,” he said finally. “You can keep the evidence.”
Soo-hyun winked, dropped the lighter back into their boot, and jumped up from their seat. “Fire!” they yelled. “There’s a fire!”
JD swore loudly, shoved the plastic containers into his bag, and tossed it over his shoulder. The three of them backed away from the table, faces lit warm by the pillar of fire. All around the restaurant the other diners dropped their cutlery and stood staring as smoke billowed across the ceiling, black to fit the restaurant’s aesthetic.
A creak reverberated through the floor as the restaurant ground to a halt, followed by a sputtering noise as the building’s sprinkler system came to life. JD held his jacket over his head, but Khoder simply cackled, not even trying to shield himself.
Soo-hyun nodded toward the stairwell, clogged with staff and customers trying to escape, business forgotten beneath the torrential downpour, fearful yells and cries puncturing the steady hiss of artificial rain. The three conspirators rushed toward it, but the host stood waiting for them, holding her shorted-out tablet over her head, makeup streaking down her face with the wet.
“I saw what you did,” she yelled over the noise, grabbing Soo-hyun’s arm.
They tried to tear free, but the host had them tight. Soo-hyun smiled—the Devil’s smile, JD called it, all teeth and mischief—then slammed the heel of their palm into the woman’s nose.
The host screamed a lilting strangled sound as both hands went to her face.
“Say hi to your surgeon for me,” Soo-hyun said, then shoved the woman aside and ran for the stairs.
“Bro, I think I’m in love.”
JD took Khoder’s arm and pulled the kid toward the exit. “You’ll get over it.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
JD’s knee throbbed with every step down toward the ground floor. The acrid smell of smoke stuck in his nose, while all around him the stairwell echoed with the dull thud of footsteps, intercut with peals o
f excitable chatter. Now that they were clear of the fire and the sprinklers, half the diners were babbling, happy they’d finally have something interesting to talk about at work. Some would be retelling this nothing story for years, elaborating it piecemeal until it was an epic conflagration they conquered with bottles of complimentary tap water.
He hit the street just behind Khoder, joining a loose crowd of fifty-odd people—diners, staff, and rubberneckers loitering on the sidewalk. They held umbrellas, jackets, or pilfered menus over their heads to shield themselves from the steady rain.
Khoder put a cigarette between his lips and started patting his pockets, searching for a light. Soo-hyun appeared behind him, and with a flash of silver they lit Khoder’s smoke. They secreted the Zippo away before producing the Faraday bag weighed down with deconstructed phones. JD grabbed the two pieces of his and slotted them into different pockets of his windbreaker—better to get away from the crime scene before transmitting GPS data.
The restaurant manager emerged from the stairwell, trailed by kitchen workers in food-stained uniforms and waitstaff sans veils. Between heaving breaths she called out: “We need everyone to remain calm! Please stay put until the police arrive.”
“Fuck that,” Soo-hyun said. They grabbed JD by the arm and pulled him away from the emergency exit and deeper into the growing crowd. Khoder followed. “Send me the kid’s contact details once you’re back online. Khoder,” Soo-hyun said, taking the teen’s attention away from his reconstructed phone, glowing dimly as it powered up. “I’ll send you those photos; get me the van driver’s name and address as soon as possible.”
“Sure thing,” Khoder said without taking his eyes off the screen.
Sirens sounded in the distance, dopplering off the flat skyscraper faces. To the west, the streets were painted in flashing reds and blues, the emergency service lights intensely bright against the stagnant facade of the unAugmented city.
JD lifted his foot off the ground, bent his knee, then straightened it, wincing at the pain. “Next time, tell me when you’re going to pull that shit so I can take the elevator first.”
If Soo-hyun heard him, they didn’t respond. They just clapped him on the shoulder and yelled over the wail of approaching fire and police: “Wear Korean team colors tomorrow. Red and blue, okay?” They slipped into the gathering crowd and disappeared into the press of bodies.
“Tomorrow then, Khoder,” JD said.
The kid was still intently focused on his phone, but he nodded, his cigarette cherry bobbing like a firefly.
JD inhaled sharply and braced himself, then pushed into the crowd, ignoring the pleas from the restaurant manager and the pain spiking his knee. Once he’d gotten free of the throng, JD walked east under the ceaseless rain, wincing with every second step.
He cursed his own judgment, along with his aching knee: Soo-hyun hadn’t changed. They never would. Setting fire to a restaurant that they were stuck inside, fifteen stories up. It was reckless. They were meant to be better than that.
Three blocks later, with the disco of police and fire department lights far behind him, JD stopped. He sat on a park bench—barely recognizable as such, its angular geometric shape meant for sitting but never sleeping. He put his phone back together while he stretched his leg.
After a few seconds he laughed despite himself. Soo-hyun had set a curtain on fire to skip out on a bill. Who does that?
He shook his head, anger at Soo-hyun washed away in the rain. He never could hold a grudge, especially not with family. He shook his head again, and felt the adrenaline ebb out of his veins with a shudder.
He blinked his phone on, and after a few seconds of initialization it came to life with a happy chirrup. JD noticed the letters “NKBK” painted messily on the wall in front of him—the inexplicable north korea best korea, like on the outskirts of Liber—then his Augmented feed kicked in, obscuring the graffiti behind a shimmering billboard for no-streak mascara.
Even reconnected to the city feeds, the street seemed eerily quiet. There was minimum biomass moving along the sidewalk, just the occasional cute couple or triple on date night, huddled under shared umbrellas, and homeless people with nowhere else to go. JD smiled at a pair of young guys only to watch their love-struck looks fall away when they saw him sitting there, soaking wet with his leg stretched out across half the path. They steered wide of him, conversation dead on their lips until they were sure he was out of earshot.
JD put the city from his mind and opened VOIDWAR. He looked up at the patch of sky between towers as he waited for the game to log in, but saw nothing of the explosive action from earlier in the night. He scanned the game’s news feed and saw Khoder was right: the massive battle had unfolded in Stokoe, involving three large factions with another half-dozen smaller ones joining in to take advantage of the situation.
Early reports suggested close to two million euro worth of ships, stations, and weapons had been lost, but Zero Corp would never release the actual figures; that data was restricted to board members and shareholders. Regardless, the Stokoe system was going to be lousy with scavengers for at least a day.
JD closed the game and sent Khoder’s contact information to Soo-hyun. He included a note:
>> My knee is killing me. You’re lucky we’re family.
The reply came back instantaneously:
>> Admit it, it’s the most excitement you’ve had in months.
JD sighed. Soo-hyun was mostly right.
He checked his phone’s map and the street signs hanging detached above the nearest corner, temporarily lost after the brisk death march to the restaurant and his rushed escape at a random trajectory.
When he finally recognized where he was, JD realized that maybe his trajectory hadn’t been random. Before the knee injury, the medical treatments, and all the rest, he’d lived three streets away, with Troy. He felt a uniquely modern disappointment in himself—knowing he should have been able to recognize the neighborhood without help. His internal maps and his sense of direction were two more sacrifices he’d made to the machines without a second thought, just like his ability to calculate basic math or remember friends’ birthdays.
JD stood, breathing quick against the pain in his leg. He tossed his rucksack over his shoulder, and limped toward his old apartment.
* * *
Troy opened the door to see JD, dripping water on his welcome mat. He frowned.
“Good to see you, too,” JD said.
“I have class in the morning, Jules; I was just about to go to bed.”
JD bit his tongue—they weren’t at a place where he could casually joke about them sleeping together.
“I was in the neighborhood—” JD stopped when he saw Troy’s frown deepen. “I really was.”
Troy wore a faded green cardigan, which he held tight around his throat with one hand, skin pink-white most of the way up his forearm before giving way to his natural dark pigment. The vitiligo spotted the sides of his head as well, so Troy wore his hair in a neatly cropped Mohawk, self-conscious about the locks of pure white that would grow there if he let them.
Troy stepped back from the doorway. “Come inside then,” he said with a sigh.
JD left his shoes on the landing and crossed the threshold into the apartment. Troy held an arm out grudgingly. They hugged, and JD rested his hands on Troy’s waist, but they felt orphaned there, so he let them fall to his side and pecked Troy on the cheek as he stepped past.
“What is that smell?” Troy asked with a crinkled nose.
“Smoke,” JD said. “I saw Soo-hyun, it’s a long story.”
Troy groaned. “I do not want to hear it.” He closed the door and locked it, then strolled down the short hallway that led to the bedroom, announcing over his shoulder: “I’ll get you something dry to wear.”
The apartment was small and neat, everything placed at right angles, as though Troy had decorated with a ruler and set square. The living room was floored in ugly, brownish, short-pile carpet that was mostly
obscured beneath a large Oriental rug that Troy had inherited from his grandparents.
JD sat on one of the two light gray couches, their fabric shadowed with various stains and indented with the invisible weight of past bodies. There was no TV opposite, just a wall adorned with framed posters for sixties French cinema—Week-end, La Chinoise, Le Samouraï, and Le Feu Follet. All of them except Week-end had been gifts from JD, printed cheap on university printers and framed by an old Korean couple at a tiny shop in outer Seoul; they’d cost a full month’s rent. JD was glad they had survived the breakup.
“How have you been?” JD called out.
“Busy. They’ve got me tutoring classical literature, early Christian and Jewish studies, as well as my philosophy classes.”
Now that he was standing inside, JD’s phone connected with the apartment’s smart systems—the ambient temperature was displayed in large digits hanging in the center of the living room, and a list of controls for light switches, the oven, microwave, and kettle slid down the left side of his vision. He’d never relinquished his control keys after he left.
“What do you know about literature or religious studies?” JD said, dropping his voice when Troy returned with a threadbare bath towel and one of his many University of Cambridge sweatshirts.
“The administration doesn’t care. As far as they are concerned, it’s all just old people and old books. ‘Give it to Professor Morrison, he loves that stuff.’ ” Troy still spoke with the hint of an English accent, clinging to his tongue years after he’d left the Brisles—just before the old government collapsed in a domino effect from the crumbling American empire.
“At least it’s work,” JD said, scrubbing his head and face with the towel.
Troy sighed and sat on the couch. “You’re right; I should be happy.”
“I didn’t say that—you can feel however you want.”
JD folded the towel over the arm of the couch and turned away from Troy to strip out of his wet shirt, as though they hadn’t seen each other naked countless times before. He pulled the sweatshirt over his head slowly, breathing in deep to savor the smell of the fabric. JD would never spend the money for the brand of detergent that Troy used, no matter how much he liked the scent. Besides, it would only remind him of Troy. He hung his windbreaker and shirt on the hat rack by the door and sat back down.
Repo Virtual Page 8
