We’re all civilian. Specs were undercover, although I’m not going anywhere without my BabyStrange, that’s for you, kids, for your enjoyment. It’s switched to live-feed from my splinter-new phone, no delay on the uplink. It’s also perfect for hiding the telltale bulge of the .44 riding on my hip.
On the escalator, standing behind me, Ibis aka Julia checks her lipgloss in my coat. You gotta admire a girl who has the presence of mind to touch up her prettifiers pre-combat. She’s been relatively cold to me since we were reintroduced. But then, I didn’t call. But then, I never do.
‘You activated?’ she murmurs behind me, so soft only I can hear, cos we’re playing strangers for the moment, until such time as Doyenne decides we’re good to make our play. As soon as Twitch has scoped out the lie of the land.
I don’t bother to answer. As if I would have forgotten in the heat. My phone is already blinking blue, logged onto Playnet and legit with the relevant authorities – although unlike my crime-busting colleagues over here, I’m registered under a fake name. It’s not necessary, but let’s say I’ve developed a taste for anonymity, for taking on an artificial ID (like Diary isn’t an exaggerated persona already). I’m sure it’s all going to get terribly confusing. Try to keep up.
I grab hold of the rails with both hands and swing over the top steps, my coat flaring behind. Julia pushes past me, just another underway annoyance, her boots making sharp cicada clicks on the vibracrete as she vanishes into the cram. I swivel on my heel and prowl over to the newsstand to buy a bottle of water. No sense going into this dehydrated. It’s still lank early. Fourteen minutes ahead of schedule. We’ve got time to kill.
Doyenne’s strict on the punctuality, Twitch told me while we were sitting in the taxi waiting for her to come back from the petrol station loo, cos she has a spastic colon. He was switching through the motions on his rifle, checking the mechanics until the constant clack got to me, and I grabbed his hand to stop him doing it.
‘Leave him alone. It chills him out.’ Ibis aka Julia spoke from the front of the car, not even looking round.
‘Well, it’s riding me one time.’
‘He needs it. He’s OCD.’
‘For fuck’s sake. Can’t he take meds? Or a hit of sugar?’ My luck to latch up with a crew with sufficient medical ailments to fill a doctor’s waiting room. And that’s not even counting the guy I’m replacing, who broke his collarbone moving a fridge.
‘Nah. Meds blunt his focus. And Doyenne doesn’t shine to drugs, so don’t talk about whatever you’re on now, okay?’ She cocked her head over her shoulder, presenting a shadow of profile, just enough so I could see the dark mole at the corner of her lip that makes her mouth look faintly misshapen. ‘And besides, he’s fourteen. So lay off, okay?’
‘Okay. Kit Kat!’ I lifted my hand off his, and the kid went right back into the damn clicking, sliding the ammo clip out, slamming it back in. ‘Do your parents know where you’re at tonight, Twitch?’
He looked puzzled, although at least he stopped with the damn clicking for an instant, and then launched straight back into it, not looking up. ‘For your information, fuckwit, my mom was the one who hooked me up with Stinger.’
From the front, Ibis aka Julia snickered.
I take a sip of water and flip casually through the racks, sneaking previews on some of the pushmags, but being particular in not skeeming the gaming titles, cos you don’t want to be too obvious. Keep it tight.
‘You gonna buy that?’ The shop chick, a bovine dumpy blonde, eyes dulled by one too many soapcasts, picks at her teeth with a fingernail, intent on the blurbvert playing on the screen above the till.
‘Me? Hmm. No. I don’t think so.’
‘Well then, skip it.’
‘Hey, I already bought the water. Doesn’t that entitle me to browsing rights?’
‘You gotta buy.’
‘Fine.’
I skim the shelves and grab a dark porn push, way up top, hand it to her to scan and flash my phone at the till. And then I crack the seal and start paging through it in front of her, pausing to show her a grotesque special on page six, cranking the volume up. She grimaces, managing to look even stupider and uglier, and leans back on her stool, pumping up the sound on her soap to try and drown me out.
I’m enjoying this now. I flick through to find another disturbing combo – oh, don’t sweat it, it’s all digital re-creations, they wouldn’t really force a hyena to mount a nubile teenager.
Her repulsed reaction, the way I’m playing her, kicks up my rush. It’s a sugar–bliss combo, if you were wondering, just enough to remix my experience of the world a little.
I glance round to check on the mission status. There’s no sign of the little OCD monster. Doyenne is standing peering at the map but really scouting out the junction, looking through the screen to the platforms below; Ibis/Julia is sitting primly on a bench, reading a book, her
posture straight as an arrow.
Someone in the crowd jostles me harder than is politely acceptable, so I nearly drop the pushmag. Often, I get off on the tight; walking so close you can feel the swerve of the air currents between you and the people coming in the opposite direction. And it’s always fun to infringe on people’s personal space. But the crush is even thicker now, like fucking rush hour or like there’s a soccer game on. Last time Orlando Pirates played the city stadium, eight people were fatally squished in this very station.
I catch a glimpse of a sludge hoodie bobbing away, carried by the surge, and recognise it as Twitch’s signature style, or rather signature lack of style. Which means either that he’s fucking with me, or that it’s time.
I glance over at the team’s positions. The bench is vacant. No visual on Ibis/Julia. Doyenne is heading down the stairs at an easy amble. Nice of them to let me know. I sneak a peek at my phone, which is thrumming insistently with an in-game msg and an attachment of ID images.
>> *SECURITY ALERT. #SD-17* Scan cams identified four (4) known terrorists in immediate vicinity.
I dump the pushmag in my pocket, saving it for later, and let the throng sweep me towards the lifts, as per our blueprint. It’s basic stuff. Ibis/Julia and Doyenne will take either end of the train, working their way down towards each looking for the terrorist called Unity, the one with the dirty bomb, while I cover the platform – and the little shit keeps a bead on all of us from some disused maintenance cube lodged in the ceiling. They got access to a maintenance cube through sheer fluke. Took them eighteen hours solid gamespace play to crack a drug-bust mission, and when they’d fragged every junkie in sight, they found all kinds of useful goodies tucked among their stash, including an access card that unlocks certain gameplaces realworld.
I click open the folder, flip through the images, supposedly uploaded fresh from the station security cams. Not actually, sorry to disappoint you. It’s all pre-scanned. As lucrative as play is, and trust me, Inkubate Inc. is paying Metro bigtime for the rights to play in the underway and set up gameplaces like Twitch’s maintenance cube; they’re still not allowed to interfere with actual realworld goings on in the public domain, which includes linking to the security cams for our gaming pleasure.
The photo-IDs are, in order:
A heavy in a gold vinyl tracksuit rubbed shiny with wear or maybe distressed on purpose, with tightly wound blond curls and a jaw designed to shatter all the bones in your fist.
A shaven-headed girl, around my age, done up all pantsula in pinstripes and carrying a black steel case, which is so blatantly obvious, I dismiss her as a decoy.