Ashraf is going through the ritual equipment check. Torches, auto screwdriver, rope, harnesses, karabiners. He’d be on video duty as well if Toby weren’t doing the honours tonight.
The adboard’s security runs on the powergrid, which means it can be taken off the powergrid, making it look like just another blackout, another Eskom power shortage, while we do our thing. The only problem is that the adboard freezes for the duration. And if someone notices that the screen has gone blank and calls it in, we’re done.
‘You ready to talk to your friend now, Toby?’
‘Already sent her a text,’ he says, holding up what is clearly an illegit phone, the defuser circuitry ripped out of the back and shoddily patched up with duct tape. It’s a brute hack-job, but effective – if you know what you’re doing. If not, the thing might kill you. I can only hope.
Ashraf whistles. ‘Toby. Where did you pick that piece of prime?’
‘I got my means and ways. I can get you one, if you want … Cost you premium, though. Probably out of your league. Handles movie downloads too.’
‘Seriously?’ Zuko and Jasmine crowd in.
‘Can I see?’
‘Focus, for fuck’s sake! What does your friend have to say?’ I cut in. This is all taking way too long.
‘She’s good to go. Whenever you are. Security’s going down in… oh, it’s down now. We got eight minutes. As of ten seconds back.’
‘Shit! She’s done it already? What the hell – never mind, just go! Go! After this one.’ A Renault cruises past, headlights slicing the night, and we all dash across the highway before the next batch of intermittent traffic comes through, scrambling up onto the island.
We step gingerly between the coils of wire, just in case Toby’s friend has not lived up to her promises. I jump to catch hold of a beam and swing my legs up, to the left of the maintenance ladder, which is off-limits, unless you have an official SIM ID or a particular desire to get crisped.
‘Tendeka! Your harness.’ Ashraf hisses, displeased, clipping himself in and starting after me, hand over hand up the rope, Toby right behind him. Jasmine and Zuko are supposed to stay at the bottom to keep watch, but the kid has other plans. He’s clipping in too. I don’t have time to worry about him, though. Not with the insane deadline we’re on.
I pull myself up onto the catwalk that runs behind the adboard and wedge the screwdriver under the corner edge of the screen, prising it away from the casing, cracking the plastech. But there’s no need to finesse it.
The great thing about smear is that the tech is straight out of the box, compliments of my friend in Amsterdam, so there aren’t preventive measures in place yet. Smear’s not the technical word, of course; it’s a TSR-3 signal delay device that interferes with data packet transfer, so the image that gets displayed is garbled and incomplete like that painting with the melted clocks. It was invented in America to try and shut down streamcasters who were getting too vocal in criticising the administration. It’s nice to be able to turn it around.
I click open the plastic container, disguised as a flashdrive, in case of random searches in the street, but I’m sweating so heavily, I nearly drop the damn thing. Ash nudges his way in beside me. ‘Two and a half minutes,’ Jazz calls from below. Ashraf’s jaw is tight with stress as he takes the smear chip and binds it onto the motherboard with his pocket solder.
‘Can you guys move it? Let me get a clear shot of this?’ Toby tjunes, his abruptly added weight making the catwalk shudder.
‘Fuck off, Toby, there’s no time. You can’t film this part of the operation. It’s too sensitive.’
‘Hey, fuck you, Tendeka. It’s my connection. I get the footage I want. And you think they’re not going to figure it out when they come to fix it tomorrow morning?’
And then Zuko swings up, so the walkway is dangerously overcrowded, when we should already be down and safely back across the highway.
‘You’re risking all of us, you asshole.’
But Toby is unmoved. ‘Yeah, so are you. Just give me a clear view, and we can all go home.’
‘Ninety-six seconds,’ Jasmine calls from below.
‘Shit, shit, shit. Everyone down. Now!’
Toby jostles in to get his shot and it’s all I can do to stop myself shoving him against the railing, which is the perfect height to hit him behind the knees and tip him into the mesh of barbwire below. Even deactivated, it would do plenty damage.
‘You’re on your fucking own.’ I swing out round the side and start the descent, not bothering to look back. Ash is already halfway down, but Zuko has stalled on the walkway, trying to get in the picture. ‘Thirty-seven seconds.’
‘Would you get down?’ Ash snaps. ‘There’s no time!’
Zuko finally catches a wake-up and starts scrambling down.
Toby rolls over the railing, real dramatic, and I’m praying he clipped in incorrectly, that his harness is going to spill him the twenty-metre drop, but no such luck. The karabiner catches and he rappels down, easily overtaking Zuko.
‘Six seconds. Come on!’
I touch down. Ashraf is struggling to unclip, and there really is no fucking time when we’re ankle-deep in smart barbwire that is about to reactivate. I flick open my Spiderco, rip the blade through the reinforced webbing of his harness, and we vault over the wire, his hand locked in mine.
‘Minus three.’
Toby kicks off hard from the support beams, still relatively high, so that he swings out over the highway, clear of the wire, and then the moron simply unclips, which means he tumbles two metres onto the tar. He lands hard. I hope he’s broken something.
‘Jesus fuck!’ He stands up and starts hobbling across the highway, clutching his shoulder.
But right now I’m worried about Zuko, who is only halfway down. If he gets caught, and caves and links this back to me, it’s going to be the end of more than just a promising junior soccer career.
‘Minus sixteen,’ Jasmine says, still watching her clock. ‘I’m sorry, I must have messed up the timing. But it’s going to kick in any second.’
‘Jump, idiot!’ I shout. And Zuko does, landing on his feet, barely, but his boot catches one of the barbs, so it shears through the leather and skin underneath, and then he’s in my arms, almost sobbing with relief.
Except the barbwire is not twitching back to life. The screen is still frozen. There’s no time to consider. I yank Zuko up and out of the coils at his feet and pelt across the highway, holding up a hand to the oncoming headlights that swerve round us, disappearing into the curve of Hospital Bend, horn bleating angrily.
Toby is waiting on the other side, sitting on the fence and rolling his shoulder. I hope it’s fucking broken.
The adboard comes back up with a flicker. And I feel that hard kick of victory. Cos we’ve fucking done it. And now, with the TSR fraying the signal, all those too-beautiful clebs and models and realife™ virtua spokespersons frisking in the ocean or nodding into the latest cell or acting in the consumer mini-movies for LG or Lucky Strike or Premiere Recruiting will look somehow wrong.
And maybe it will take the commuters a second or two to figure it out. To pick up that the features of the bouncy beach babe or the cool hand smoker in the ads on this board are melting, running down their faces. Smeared. And it feels fucking great, even with Zuko sporting an injury that is going to be difficult to explain to casualty. Until Toby opens his mouth.
‘Shit, that really hurt. Do not try this at home, kids. Oh, what. Don’t be so panicky, Tendeka. I was kidding about the eight minutes. Lerato’s real generous. She gave us twelve. I just thought you could do with added incentive, up the drama, you know?’