It takes me less than a minute to crack his future*renovate email account. Penile enhancement ads. Newsletters from groups with dubious titles like WorldChanger or Guerrilla Corporatista, mostly unopened. Messages from fanboys and girls.
>> That was the sickest video yet, man! How did you pull that shit off? Props.
Zuko cropping up once again, quite the disciple. But the account is suspiciously empty, like he’s been systematically trashing everything, taking some limited precautions here at least. I could get into the cache on the servers, but that would take hours, which I don’t have. And I have to know if there’s anything incriminating. Sent items and trash are cleaned out, but the schmuck didn’t clear his IM conversations.
The bulk of the chats are with somebody called skyward*. What’s with all the damn asterisks? Mostly bullshit, heavy talk about co-opting the revolution and other doggerel, but then I come across one which mentions me by name.
skyward*>>how goes your tec contact? like to put her in touch with some of our other operations. she does good work.
10>>Lerato? Yeah, I only really know her through Toby, and he’s too much of a prick to work with.
skyward*>>pity.
I look up the IP address for skyward*’s email address, because now I’m going to have to hack into his email account and clean up there too. I feel sick at the thought of how much has to be done, how much time it’s all going to take, the hundreds and hundreds of interconnections. I cannot believe he mentioned me by name.
The IP address is not in the Netherlands at all. And at first I think I’ve made a stupid mistake, an entry-level blunder. It can’t possibly be. And then I catch on.
I eject the secondary SIM from my phone. My first instinct is to flush the incriminating evidence, but if I can get out of here, I’ll need it. What I really need is my passport and the suitcase I haven’t packed yet. There is a noise outside. I push the SIM as deep as it will go into my vagina.
I flush the toilet and emerge to find Jane leaning against the row of curved basins. The relief is mixed with irritation at her timing. I can’t begin to imagine what she’s come all the way up here for. Her office is in accounts, five floors down.
‘Hey Lerato. I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Got a minute?’
‘Jesus, Jane. Can’t it wait till I get home? I’m a little tied up right now.’
‘There’s someone who wants to see you.’
‘What? No. Rathebe will flip. I haven’t even had a chance to process—’
She flashes a card at me, a visual ID. And at first it doesn’t register. How can you live with someone for eight months and not know them at all?
I should have seen it coming. I should have guarded myself at home as carefully as I did at work.
She guides me to the lift. As I pass the boardroom, I will Mpho to look up, to help me. But he’s panic stations like everyone else, head down, and what could he do anyway? Rathebe glances up, sees I’m with Jane, and gives a little nod of acquiescence that lets me know I’m really, really fucked, even before the lift doors open to reveal a security guy with two (!) Aitos flanking him, putting paid to the half-baked plan I suddenly realise I was entertaining, to take her down in the lift, still get away somehow. I take a step back, but Jane grabs my arm.
‘It’s okay, we can fit.’ The guy whistles and the dogs press in tight against him, making space, but it’s still a squeeze. I can feel the hot pressure of their breath on the back of my legs. Jane slides a card key into the control panel. I feel sick with stupidity.
I fucked a boy for a couple of months whose motto was ‘It could always be worse’. It was just stupid. Of course it could always be worse. If you were buried up to your head in the desert waiting for the vultures to pluck out your eyes, someone could piss on you, fire ants could make a nest in your mouth, burrowing rodents could start eating your feet.
But this is bad. This is as bad as it could possibly be.
Because the IP address for skyward* comes back to Communique’s corporate pipeline. To this building.
And the ID Jane flashed me in the bathroom had the logo for spyware controller. Internal Affairs.
Toby
Of course I’ve noticed that her face is healed. Think I’m a moron? When she stops to admire her reflection, I hustle her on. ‘C’mon. Keep moving. You want to bring attention down on us?’
‘But—’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know. Lucky for you. Wish I had some nano to stitch me up from the inside.’ The headache is eating through the painkillers, chowing down on the edges, and I’m itchy as fuck and my nose won’t stop running, so I have to wipe it with the back of my hand and smear the snot off on my jeans.
‘Charming,’ she says, real helpful, and refuses to take my hand again. I hadn’t even realised we were holding hands. I’m fucking starving, maybe even dying, and she’s concerned about playing Ms. Manners. Which sparks me off on my motherbitch, and how the least she could do is download some cash so we can buy breakfast and a Ghost for K, who is jonesing bad, and maybe a pair of cheapnasty sunglasses so I can deal with the glare. I mean, what are parents for?
But the catch is that we’re still phoneless. It took fifteen minutes just to get out of my apartment block, waiting for someone else’s SIM to trigger the door so we could slip out. Pretend making-out in the hall, so we had an excuse to be hanging about.
I accost a pedestrian on the sidewalk, a man in a red leather jacket unlocking his car, one of the only people around.
‘Hey, excuse me, sir? My phone is down and I was wondering—’
‘No. I’m sorry,’ he says, super-brusque in the brush-off, already getting into the car, adding, ‘God bless you,’ through the window as he zips it up, like I was some filthy riff. Like a riff could afford to be traipsing round town in a BabyStrange coat, even if it is fritzing, blurting random images from its memory. It did not take kindly to that power-up at the station. Shit. At this rate we’re going to be walking to Lerato’s.
It’s the same story at the underway. The automatic doors won’t fucking open to let us get into the station, let alone onto the trains. I don’t see how they’re expecting us to report to our nearest handy vaccine centre if we can’t fucking get there. And no one will let me cadge a call.
K keeps touching her mouth, distracted, like she’s making sure it really is all there.
‘Do you think you could stop playing with your face and give me a hand here?’
‘What do you want me to do?’ she says, as if it’s my fault that we’re stranded, isolated. Disconnected.
‘You’re a girl. You’re cute. Get someone to let you use their phone.’
‘What do you want me to tell them?’
‘That you dropped it in the toilet. That you were mugged. I don’t care. Anything. Wait, here’s the number you wanna connect,’ and as I’m writing it down for her, I realise I don’t know the fucking number. It’s on autodial, preprog nine, starts 083-253 something something something. I don’t know Lerato’s digits either, or even that skank Unathi’s. Which doesn’t leave us much in the way of options. My stomach is knotting audibly with hunger.
Someone tugs on my sleeve. ‘Buy me a bunny chow?’ It’s a street kid, wearing filthy men’s shoes that swallow his feet, tufts of newspaper sticking out in ruffles, clutching a brown paper bag like his life depends on it, and faintly reeling already at this time of the a.m.
‘Aw, c’mon don’t touch the fashion. Not now, okay? Just piss off.’