The right side of the café was lined with large booths, upholstered in black vinyl, the small Formica tables littered with glasses, some standing, others knocked over in haste, liquid spilling over the edges and pooling on the floor. Two of the booths were scattered with computer parts, silicon and solder scattered in divination. Opposite the booths a long bar ran the full length of the space. The shelves behind it had been stacked with bottles of cheap booze—a scant few survived, the rest reduced to broken glass. The mirrored wall behind it was dented by bullets, and liquor dripped off the shelves in a gentle patter like rain.
A steady, quiet hiss played over the scene, like distant highway traffic, emanating from speakers mounted in the ceiling. An auxiliary cable dangled from a shattered tablet, the screen sparking a rainbow around the bullet hole, music like flying locusts played tinny from the device.
There was a sob from behind the counter; Enda turned at the sound, but thought better of peering over. She dipped her hand into her bag and found Tiny. She flicked its power switch and tossed the eye-drone into the air, where it faltered for a split second and hovered in place with a high whine. The drone’s low-res camera display expanded across the left side of Enda’s vision. In shadow mode, Tiny could be controlled using eye and eyelid movements. It could be unwieldy, but it kept her hands free.
Enda flicked her eyes up and the drone flew higher, giving her a view over the bar. She squinted slightly and Tiny flew forward, clearing the scarred, black-painted counter, and giving Enda a view of the Varket’s bartender, cowering with his back against a glass fridge door. His finely articulated prosthetic hand clutched a small knife—the type used to cut lemons for cocktails—and he held his phone in the other hand, trembling with the effort of gripping it. No gun.
Enda blinked the command to recall Tiny, and snatched it out of the air. She leaned over the bar for her first proper look at the bartender—hair soaked with booze, eyes red, translucent slug of snot leaking from his nose.
“What’s your name?”
“Min,” he sobbed.
“Min, I need you to put the knife down,” Enda said, gently.
“Are you the police?”
“What happened?” Enda asked, dodging the question.
He glanced toward the back of the bar.
“They still here?”
Min nodded. “Downstairs.”
Fuck. Enda slammed the center bar of her riot shield on the counter and Min flinched. Enda grimaced and hit it again, harder, and the shield extended a foot and a half in two directions.
“Climb over the bar, quickly,” Enda said.
Min hesitated. He stood slowly, uneasy on his feet, eyes stuck to the back wall of the café. He vaulted the counter and Enda helped him with her free hand.
“Outside. Wait for the police. Okay?”
Min nodded and scurried to the door, briefly admitting the noise of Songdo and a shaft of daylight that illuminated motes of dust and the drift of gun smoke near the ceiling.
Enda tossed Tiny back into the air. She took the baton from her bag, and swung it to full extension with a satisfying shick. Part of her wished it were a gun. She inhaled deep, and flew Tiny toward the rear of the café. Enda walked three steps behind the machine, urging her boots to a silence their heavy tread could never manage. In the back corner, a set of stairs dropped beneath street level. She guided Tiny down into the subterranean corridor and found it clear. Enda descended quickly, heart thundering in her chest, sweat already gathering in her pits.
It wasn’t nerves, she told herself, it was her body preparing itself to fight. She no longer had the flight instinct—it had been ground out of her by years of training and countless missions for the Agency.
At the bottom of the steps, the corridor stretched off into vantablack infinity, and Enda cursed the Varket’s interior designer. The familiar smack of knuckle on bone resounded through the space. A voice cried out, pitched high enough to be a woman, or a boy not yet hit puberty.
Enda sent Tiny ahead, past one open door, then another, VR immersion rooms empty, images of VOIDWAR projected onto the walls—ships hanging static against a backdrop of stars, their pilots escaped into the real. Tiny reached the last room, the low-resolution camera showing Enda five pixelated figures. One sat slumped in a reclining VR seat, while three others took turns beating him with their fists. One was white, with long red hair, the rest were Asian. One had an ugly bowl cut, one a Mohawk, and the third stood in the corner with a clean-shaven head, clutching a 3D-printed Kalashnikov—the famously reliable weapon rendered un- by the inadequacies of plastic.
Enda pulled Tiny back before it was seen and closed the video feed to clear her vision. Enda crept past the hovering drone and paused outside the door, assailed by the sound of torture.
Enda clenched her hands around the baton and the riot shield grip. With her mind clear of all thought, she stepped into the room, taking in the scene in a single instant. Seeing violence with her own eyes grounded it in the real: it was Khoder Osman in the seat, his face barely recognizable; a swollen, bruised, and bleeding mess. Coppery scent of blood reached her nose, joined by the warm scent of old sweat. The four assailants were male, either teenagers or in their early twenties. Each was dressed in layers of black faded to various shades of gray. Osman’s blood spatter revealed itself only with its wet freshness.
Enda charged the standing guard in the corner. His eyes shot wide, and he brought the Kalashnikov around—too late. Enda slammed the riot shield into him, pinning the gun against his body and his body against the wall. He pulled the trigger and a five-round burst shot across the room, punching holes in the LED screen wall. The other three assailants flinched.
No, not “assailants.” Not even “males.” They were targets. Enda’s face twisted in rage or gruesome joy. In that moment she couldn’t be sure which.
She stepped back and freed the target from the wall, and the gun fell from his hands. Enda stomped his groin, tender flesh caught between boot and bone. He bent over double with a choked howl, and Enda swung the baton at his head. A sickening crack sent vibrations traveling up the length of telescoping metal and into Enda’s hand.
She spun about to face the remaining targets. The redhead backed away, but the other two rushed her. Enda weathered their frantic blows long enough to kick the Kalashnikov behind her and keep it out of the fight, then she struck again. She barged forward, putting her full weight behind the shield, and earned the wet smack of flesh on plastic as Bowl Cut was lifted off his feet. His limbs flailed as he flew back. He hit the wall with a crack of broken glass, and slid to the ground.
“Jin!” Redhead called out in anger.
Mohawk took the opening to hit Enda in the kidney with a left hook—a solid hit, stronger than she expected from the gangly fighter. She swung her baton out and he ducked beneath it, punching twice more, both strikes landing in her gut. Enda swung her elbow, crunch of cartilage breaking as she hit his nose. More blood on the floor to mix with Osman’s. She lifted the shield to cover her front again, baton held loose by her side. Mohawk stepped back, quickly wiped the blood from his nose with the back of his hand.
Enda’s eyes flicked past Mohawk to Redhead, spotted his Glock knockoff printed in bright red plastic, the sneer as he aimed down the sight, trying for a shot over Mohawk’s shoulder. Silence filled the room, broken only by the groaning of the two targets on the floor and Osman’s wet, ragged breathing.
“Kid, are you still with me?” Enda asked loudly.
Osman sputtered some wordless sounds. Good enough.
“Who the fuck are you?” Redhead asked.
“Concerned citizen,” Enda said. She backed toward the corner, felt her foot knock against the stock of the plastic AK-47.
“Bullshit,” Redhead said. “Drop the weapon.”
Enda threw the baton to the floor where it clattered and bounced, the sound sharp in the stillness.
“Pick it up, Park,” Redhead said, and Mohawk did as he was told, gripping
it with both hands like a baseball bat. “Now drop the shield.”
“Leave me and the kid alone, and I’ll let you live,” Enda said. She blinked Tiny’s vision onto her left eye, and turned her head so she could still see Redhead and the black abyss down the barrel of his gun.
“You’ll let me live? That’s fuckin’ cute.”
Enda pushed Tiny into the doorway, its rotors masked by the buzz of shorted screens. Mental schism as Enda saw herself painted on the lens of her contex, crouched behind her shield. She steered Tiny further into the room, and pivoted the drone so the last two targets were centered in its vision.
“Drop the shield,” Redhead said again.
Enda tore off the Velcro strap that kept the shield secured to her arm. As soon as she saw Redhead’s smirk she threw the shield at Mohawk, sent Tiny flying at Redhead’s face, and dropped to the floor. She landed awkwardly, her elbow digging into her side, and grabbed the Kalashnikov.
Redhead cursed, and fired his pistol—hollow sound as the bullet chanked into the wall above Enda’s head. She fired one burst and Mohawk’s leg shattered in a shower of blood, the white of bone showing through torn meat.
Redhead fired again as he ran for the door, the Glock popping like a child’s toy compared to the roar of the AK. Enda swung the weapon past Osman and took aim at the door. She let off another burst, unsure if she hit Redhead as he disappeared from view, leaving the echo of footsteps in his wake.
Mohawk cried and jabbered—rapid-fire Korean spilling from his mouth intercut with English swearing. The target in the corner was out cold, a small halo of blood pooled around his head. Bowl Cut groaned and got onto all fours.
Enda stood over him and pressed the AK-47 to the back of his head. “Are you going to try and hit me again, Jin?”
He shook his head, scattering tears across the floor.
“Have you got a belt?” Enda asked. He nodded, slow and hesitant. “Pull it tight around your friend’s leg and maybe he won’t die.”
She approached Osman, strapped to the seat, chest stained red with blood. One eye was swollen shut, the other rolled in the socket.
“Osman, can you hear me?”
His eye stopped and found Enda. He groaned, a guttural sound from deep within.
“Help is coming, okay. Stay with me.” She checked his pulse with her free hand. It was too slow. She would have thought he was dead if it weren’t for the whistle of his breathing.
He opened his mouth. “Find—” He paused to swallow blood. “Find JD.” He coughed and a fine mist of blood sprayed over Enda’s face. It was not the first time that had happened.
“Stay with me, kid.” Enda felt his pulse jolt through the veins of his neck and waited for another.
And waited.
Nothing.
Osman’s mouth hung slack—a red mess of bleeding gums and missing teeth. His left eye was open, sad even in death.
“Sorry, kid,” Enda said. She turned back to Jin. “Who’s JD?”
“Fuck you.”
She pulled the gun back, ready to slam its butt into Jin’s face, but the sound of sirens stopped her. They were close. Enda glanced around the room and sighed. She lowered the gun, took out her phone, and called the Mechanic.
“Good afternoon, Enda.”
“It’s really not,” Enda said. “I’m going to be offline for a little while. But I need you to run a name—initials really. JD. Cross-reference that with Tyson’s gait recording. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Understood,” Natalya said. “My concern is that this may provide rather a large quantity of poor-quality hits.”
“I trust your judgment. Just sift through them and have a list ready for me by tomorrow.”
Enda hung up, and dropped her phone on the floor. She aimed the assault rifle at it, and opened fire. The phone bounced with the force, glass and metal glittering as they exploded into the air.
The tight tattoo of boots reached Enda through the sharp whine of her ringing ears. With a series of quick movements she released the magazine from the AK-47, cleared the chambered round, and field-stripped the weapon, tossing each piece onto the ground by the doorway.
As she knelt on the floor and laced her fingers behind her head the flash of light off Tiny’s lens caught her eye. The drone hovered in the middle of the room—without her phone, her link to it was lost.
“I hope you got my good side,” she said.
A second later, SWAT officers poured into the room, yelling commands in Korean and English, scanning the room with their shotguns—Enda, three incapacitated thugs, a dead body, and blood pooling on the floor and spattered on the walls.
It did not look good.
* * *
It was almost 3 a.m., and JD was still awake. I could tell he hadn’t slept—sensors in my phone-body tracked his breathing patterns and the way he shifted in bed, sighing and turning while beside him Troy lay still.
JD picked his phone off the floor, tethered to the wall by a charging cable. The screen came on, blue-white light shining over the bed, illuminating both JD and Troy so I could see them clearly.
“What are you doing?” Troy said, words dull and groggy.
“I can’t sleep,” he said. “Soo-hyun isn’t answering their phone, and Khoder hasn’t been online for hours. I’m worried.”
“You’re safe here.”
“What does that matter if the others aren’t?”
“You’re doing everything you can.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
Troy sighed. “You’re doing what you can without putting yourself at risk.”
JD didn’t respond. I counted eight seconds of silence before he spoke: “I should go to the police. They’ll find me soon anyway.”
“Prison isn’t safety.”
“What?”
“If you, Soo-hyun, and Khoder are arrested, you won’t be safe.” Troy shifted in bed to kiss JD’s shoulder. JD wrapped an arm around him, pressing my phone-face against Troy’s back.
>> Why are you worried about Khoder and Soo-hyun?
They stayed entwined for thirteen seconds. When JD moved his hand away, he saw my question. “Because they could be in trouble,” he said.
>> Many people are in trouble at this moment.
“You mean, why am I worried about these two in particular?”
>> Yes.
“I care about them. Khoder is a friend, and Soo-hyun is family.”
>> You are connected to them. But now you cannot connect.
“Exactly.”
>> What do get from this connection?
“It’s not about that. You don’t connect to people to get something—”
“You can,” Troy added.
“You can, but you shouldn’t,” JD said. “What do you get from connecting with me?”
“Me?” Troy asked.
“No, I’m talking to my phone.”
>> I learn things I might not otherwise have a chance to learn.
“Right,” JD said. “If you don’t connect with people and learn how their lives differ to yours, then you risk becoming self-absorbed, narcissistic. You can’t tell what a person is like until you spend time with them, and in finding out what they’re like, you learn other ways to be a human.”
“Person,” Troy said.
“What?”
“If you’re going to teach it ethics, you should use ‘person.’ A nonbiological intelligence could never be human, but it could be a person.”
JD smiled. “Does that mean you believe me now?”
“I don’t know,” Troy said, “but I do believe in good pedagogy.”
>> You connect with other people to learn other ways to be a person?
JD sighed. “People form relationships for a lot of different reasons, but if I had to boil it down, then yes.”
>> How many ways of being are there?
“As many as there are people,” Troy said.
>> What do you do when you learn these other ways of being?
“Try and figure out why life matters, why living matters.”
>> Life matters because of people?
“Life matters because it has to. Because it’s all we have.”
>> I’m not sure I understand.
“Me either, but I’m trying. And that’s what life is.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Enda rubbed the skin beneath each handcuff, massaging the inflamed red ridges of flesh. The interrogation room was the same as any of the dozen she had found herself in over the years. They were always furnished with the same anodized aluminum table and two chairs—invariably scuffed and battered from years, or even decades, of use and abuse. Sometimes the video cameras were visibly mounted in the corners of the room, but mostly they were hidden. The walls were always smooth cement or cinder block, and always painted a dark color—gray, navy blue, forest green one time in Brazil—but never black. One wall was always taken up by one-way glass, the reflection too-dark, like the image on a dying monitor.
Enda didn’t need to see her dim reflection to know how guilty she looked. The police had found her in a small room with a dead body and three injured thugs. Before she could get back to her investigation, they would need answers. But first, they would make her wait. In Enda’s experience, police interrogation tactics revolved around shouting or enforced waiting, with only a thin spectrum of actions between those two extremes. At least they didn’t beat suspects in Songdo. Too much surveillance.
The image of Osman’s battered face loomed again in her mind. She shut her eyes and saw it there, too. Harsh lemon scent of cleaning products seared Enda’s nose—beneath it, something feral, fear and rage sweated out by a thousand different bodies.
Her leg bounced beneath the table, unspent energy fluttering through her body looking for release. When one thigh began to ache, she swapped to the other. The waiting bored and irritated her—the confined space, the lack of movement. She would have preferred to be handcuffed to a treadmill so at least she could run while she waited, run until her mind let go of Osman’s face, and everything else. Instead, her leg continued to bounce.
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