by Dan Wells
This wasn’t a neighborhood, it was a shantytown.
“We’re losing our lead,” said Renata. “Your plan sucks.”
Mr. Park was closing the distance quickly now—he didn’t know the area, but his robotic legs could handle the constant turns and swerves better than the motorcycles could. Alain jerked to the side to avoid a pile of dirt-crusted plastifoam bricks, nearly losing control of the bike, but Mr. Park simply jumped over it, shortening the gap even more. He was barely ten meters behind them now.
“I’m sorry,” said Alain. “Losing him in here was our last trick.”
“I told you not to pick up the girl!” shouted Renata.
“He’s gonna catch us?” asked Marisa. She thought about Mr. Park chewing through metal, and shuddered.
“We have weapons,” said Alain, “but the odds are against us. We’ll try to hold them off while you hide—”
“Screw that,” said Marisa. She scanned the road ahead and checked her GPS map. “You see that truck coming toward us?”
“The semitrailer?” asked Alain. “What about it?”
“We’re going to hit him with it,” said Marisa. “Renata, go straight toward that truck, and when it turns, follow it.”
“I don’t take orders from randos,” snapped Renata.
“Do it,” said Alain. “We don’t have any better ideas.” He glanced back at Marisa, and she was so close to his neck his hair brushed her face. “How do you know it’ll turn?”
“Because if she heads straight for it it’ll recalculate its route to avoid her,” said Marisa. “That street on its left is the only other place it can go. Then as she keeps following it, it’ll speed up to stay ahead of her. I’ve studied the traffic SI, so I know how it’ll react.”
“How does that help us?”
“Because we’re going to get in front of it—turn here.”
Alain swung his bike suddenly to the right, the tires squealing, and Mr. Park followed them barely five paces behind. Exactly like Marisa had hoped he would—he wanted her, not Renata. Renata kept going straight, and a moment later Alain nodded. “Renata just told me the truck turned, exactly like you said. What now?”
“Now we turn left,” said Marisa, and leaned forward to make sure Alain could hear her. “I’m looking at the map on GPS, and estimating speed as well as I can. If I’ve timed it right, the truck will get to the next intersection the same time we do.”
“And swerve to miss us,” said Alain. “That’s how the SI works.”
“That’s how the SI is supposed to work,” said Marisa, “but nothing is perfect, and we’re going to exploit a loophole. If an autocar gets into a situation where it can’t avoid every obstacle on the road, it’s programmed with very specific rules about which one of them to hit.”
“It’ll never choose a pedestrian over a motorcycle!” said Alain.
“No,” said Marisa, watching the intersection rocket toward them. “But it’ll always choose the larger pedestrian out of two.”
They reached the intersection in a blur, and the truck loomed enormously in Marisa’s peripheral vision. Now or never, she thought, and screamed as she let go of Alain and shoved herself backward off the motorcycle. Her senses seemed to slow as she hung in the air, the truck barely an arm’s length away; Mr. Park was reaching toward her, his fingers just brushing the collar of her jacket, and then the SI made its choice and the truck swerved and rammed full force into the massive bionic thug. Marisa hit the ground with a jarring crash, her momentum still carrying her forward, tumbling and scraping across the asphalt until finally stopping in a pile of old containers and wispy plastic packing strips. She blinked a few times, almost surprised to be alive, and rolled painfully on her side to look back at the accident. The truck was stopped, and Mr. Park was underneath it, his legs splayed out like a frog under a shipping crate.
“Oh, hey,” said Marisa weakly. “It worked.” She tried to stand up, but her legs didn’t want to move. “I’m going to pass out now.”
She did.
NINE
The first thing Marisa saw when she woke up was the same scene: Mr. Park, under a truck, in the middle of the road. She jerked back in shock, only to realize that it was just an image, rippling softly on the folds of Renata’s hoodie. The blue-haired girl smiled down at her, which was perhaps even more of a shock, and held the bottom hem of the hoodie with her hands, pulling it taut so the image was clearer.
“You like it? The hoodie has its own camera, so I can wear whatever image I want. This one was way too good not to use.” She put her hand on Marisa’s, gripping her gently. “I like you, random girl we picked up on the street. I like you a lot.”
Marisa didn’t know what to say. “Thanks?”
“She’s awake!” Renata called over her shoulder. She looked back at Marisa with a beatific smile. “You need anything? You’re doped all to hell on painkillers, and we’ve got sealant cream gooped onto all your major road rash areas—including your ass, but don’t worry, I made Alain leave the room for that one. The whole time you’ve been unconscious, I promise that no one has rubbed your ass but me.”
“That . . . doesn’t actually make me feel better.”
“Me quebras el corazón,” said Renata, putting a hand to her chest. “Still, though, you’re the Parkslayer, and that covers a multitude of sins. You hungry?”
Marisa looked around at the room they were in, finding it small and cramped—smaller than her bedroom at home, yet somehow filled not only with the bed she’d been lying on but a round kitchen table, two metal chairs, an electric stove, and some shelves that looked ready to fall right off the faded, filthy wall. The room had once been painted red, but the color was mostly gone now, peeling off and exposing large patches of brown. The combination made the room look organic and diseased.
Alain walked in, and Marisa got a better look at him now that they weren’t on the run from a cybernetic nightmare. He was about her age, maybe a year or two older, with dark skin nearly the same color as his hair. His goggles were off now, exposing deep brown eyes, and she was struck again by how good-looking he was. Under his jacket he wore greasy mechanic’s overalls, the pockets bulging with tools or spare parts or, for all she knew, weapons. The thought reminded her of their escape, and she looked back at Renata, seeing that she had both her hands back.
“What?” asked Renata.
Marisa searched for the words, couldn’t find them, and instead just raised her hands, wiggling her fingers.
“Oh yeah,” said Renata, matching the motion with her own completely not-blown-up hands. “I have a spare. This one doesn’t blow up, though, and two of the fingers don’t work very well.” She picked up an assault rifle that was leaning in the corner, checking the chamber as she spoke. “Anyway, I’m going hunting. Any requests?”
Marisa shook her head, confused. Were there wild animals in this part of LA?
“Chinese,” said Alain.
“Wait, what?” asked Marisa.
“Food,” said Renata, grabbing a loaded magazine from the shelf by the stove. “Chill.”
A loud gunshot sounded outside, and Marisa jumped. The movement aggravated her injuries from the crash earlier, which only increased her anxiety. Renata continued to prep her rifle. “Easy, Parkslayer, it’s just the neighbors.”
“We hunt nulis,” said Alain. “Everyone in Kirkland does—or they steal from the people who do. When we’re hungry, we look for food delivery nulis.” He looked at Renata. “Actually, I think speed is more important than selection tonight. She needs to eat whatever we can find first.”
“Got it,” said Renata, and pulled her hood up over her head. She blinked, and the street scene on her hoodie changed to a dark blue-black camouflage. “Death to tyrants.” She went outside, and closed the door softly behind her.
Marisa frowned when she saw the darkness through the closing door. “What time is it?” Before Alain could answer she blinked on her djinni, bringing up the clock display. “Ten forty-seven?”
she shouted. “My parents are going to kill me.”
“I tried to send a message to whoever might be looking for you,” said Alain, “but your ID says your name is Selena Gomez, and I feel pretty confident that that’s a fake.”
“Come on, now,” said Marisa, blinking through the messages on her djinni to see who’d been trying to reach her. “You don’t think I look like a fifty-eight-year-old Oscar-winning philanthropist? I’m offended.” Five messages from her father, six from her mother, two from Sandro, two from Pati, and twenty-nine from Sahara. She even had a voice message from Bao. She sighed. “They probably think I’m dead.” Either way, she’d be grounded for a month. She blinked on a few more programs, checking her djinni settings. “You’re just lucky I’m still anonymized from the hack, or they’d have tracked my GPS and brought a half-dozen LAPD drones blasting down your door.”
Alain shook his head. “I, um . . . took the liberty of scrambling your GPS signal, precisely to avoid that kind of thing.” Her eyes flashed with anger, and he held out his hand, palm toward her in a calming gesture. “Just from the outside,” he said, “no djinni hacking involved. Aside from the first aid, we haven’t touched you.”
Marisa remembered Renata’s comments and grimaced. “I’m feeling a little violated from that as it is.” She looked at Alain, suddenly aware all over again of how handsome he was, and how half-dressed she was, in a bed, alone with him. “Thank you,” she said cautiously, “for not . . . for taking care of me.”
Alain shrugged. “Obviously. I’m the one who got you into this mess, at least in part, so it’s the least I can do. And I didn’t mean for our daring rescue to end in you falling off a motorcycle—”
“I jumped off the motorcycle,” said Marisa quickly. She smiled, just slightly. “Give me a little credit.”
Alain smiled back. “And you probably saved our lives when you did it, so once again, I’m the one who should be thanking you.”
“Just saving my own skin,” she said, and looked at her scraped-up forearms. “In a way.”
“Is there any digital damage?” he asked.
“From the crash?”
“From the hack,” said Alain. “They got a virus into my djinni before I could jack out. You?”
Marisa frowned, and blinked up her control panel to start running diagnostics. “It . . . doesn’t look like it,” she said, reading the results as they came in. “All the root folders are clear, the firewall’s still intact—”
“How’s your connection speed?” asked Alain. “That’s where the virus is hitting me; looks like it’s trying to cut me off completely.”
“That’s horrible,” said Marisa. She’d been forced to turn off her djinni a few months before, at the same time she was tangling with Grendel. It was, to put it mildly, unpleasant. She checked her diagnostic results, and shook her head. “Speeds are all normal. Looks like I’m clean, though I’ll definitely run a deeper scan when I get home.”
“Good,” said Alain, “I’m glad you’re safe.” He watched her for a moment, then spoke again. “So what should I call you, if not Selena?”
“Heartbeat,” said Marisa. Better to stick with her call sign until she knew if she could trust him or not. “And your name is Alain?”
“Alain Bensoussan,” he said, bowing slightly as he sat in the chair. “From the Free Republic of France.”
“The ‘Free Republic’?”
“One of the last nations left in the world not wholly owned by corporate interests.”
Marisa shook her head. “Only a handful of countries are wholly owned by corporations—”
“Do you really consider that a meaningful distinction?” he asked, interrupting her. His brow was furrowed now, his face intense. “Just because Haiti has been legally purchased and the US hasn’t, do you really think the US is any less of a corporate pawn?”
Marisa was taken aback by his intensity, and stumbled for an answer. “We’re still . . . we’re a sovereign nation.”
“Every meaningful decision your ‘nation’ makes is suggested, vetted, and approved by megacorps,” said Alain. “Your local governments are the same way. Just last year, Ganika changed LA’s zoning laws to allow themselves to purchase the land for their new plant, leaving neighborhoods like this one in shambles.”
“Everyone knows Ganika has a few seats on the city council,” said Marisa. “I’m not an idiot. But I’m just saying that we’re not . . .” She wasn’t prepared for a conversation about the separation of commerce and state. “Look, ninety percent of the country runs on the tech produced by a handful of companies. With megacorps that large, it’s inevitable that they’re going to control a certain corrupt segment of the government. But it’s not like they’ve rewritten the Constitution or whatever.”
Alain squinted at her. “You sure don’t talk like a freedom fighter.”
Marisa shrugged. “That’s because I’m not one.”
“In my experience, there are only two kinds of people who aren’t,” said Alain. “People who don’t know the truth, and people who do know the truth but don’t want to fight.”
“So you’re asking which I am,” said Marisa, scowling at him. “Stupid or spineless?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“But it what’s you meant,” said Marisa.
“I . . . would never phrase it that way.”
“Does that make it less insulting?”
Alain paused, then shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . I was hoping to recruit you.”
“Recruit me? For what?”
“The war,” said Alain. “The one underneath all that rationalizing you just offered me. The people against the megacorps. Ganika, Abendroth, KT Sigan—they’re destroying the lives and livelihoods of people in this city, and all around the world, and we’re doing what we can to stop them.”
Marisa remembered Alain’s final words inside the Sigan network: I just trashed their payment database. “You’re a terrorist.”
“I’m a revolutionary.”
“Tell that to all the people whose lives you ruined with that Sigan hack you pulled,” said Marisa. She hadn’t been able to bring herself even to steal from Sigan, and this guy was trashing their systems without a thought for the people who depended on Sigan to communicate. “The people whose internet is going to be shot down until the payment systems are back online? The regular people who work at Sigan who are probably going to get fired for what you did?”
“I wouldn’t expect a rich girl to understand,” said Alain.
“Rich?” asked Marisa. “Are you kidding me? I’m barrio trash, one bad sales day from living on the street. In what possible world am I a rich girl?”
“In the one we just pulled you out of before coming here. Look, I didn’t save you to argue with you about this. I saved you because your work on that hack was brilliant.”
“Because I did the same thing you did?” asked Marisa.
“You keep twisting my meaning—”
“No,” said Marisa, “you just keep meaning a bunch of really rude things, and don’t like getting called on them. So here’s the deal.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed, no longer attracted to his arrogance and thus no longer shy in his presence. She might have still been curious about what he was trying to do back at Sigan, but his attitude had her blood boiling. “I’m going to save you the trouble of coming up with new ways to condescend to me and tell you that I’m not interested. I’m not a terrorist, I’m not a rich girl, I’m not amused, and I’m not staying here any longer.” She stood up, putting a hand on the wall to steady herself from a sudden loss of balance. What kind of painkillers had they given her?
“This is not a safe neighborhood,” said Alain.
“Yeah, I’ve met two of the residents already.” Marisa looked down at her ripped, ragged jeans, and felt her backside with her hand—yeah, that was a lot of exposed skin. Not enough to raise any eyebrows in a dance club, but since the skin was just as ripped as the jeans,
that changed the equation significantly. “You said you did some first aid—do I have any broken bones?” She couldn’t feel any, but as drugged as she was, she didn’t trust herself to feel much of anything.
“Just the road rash,” said Alain.
“Good,” said Marisa. “Do you have any pants?”
“I’ll . . . get you some of mine.” He stood up and moved to the next room. “I don’t think any of Renata’s will fit you.”
Great, thought Marisa. First he calls me stupid, then he calls me fat. She took a few more steps, wobbling in the druggy haze, and looked into the room Alain had entered. It was the same size as the one she was in, but packed full of equipment: the two motorcycles, several box computers, and a dense stack of mismatched tools and greasy engineering equipment. She wasn’t a motorcycle person, but these looked impressive—wide and heavy, possibly armored, with massive engines and low-slung seats that didn’t sit above the wheels so much as between them. The wheels themselves were bizarre: they didn’t have spokes or axles; they were more like metal and rubber rings that slid through a single connection point on the frame. The label on the back said Suzuzaki, but Marisa had never heard of it. She didn’t see any other doors or rooms, and poked her head farther through the doorway, looking around at the corners.
