‘Should we, uh… Do you want us to come in with you?’ Damian asks.
‘Ag, no! She’ll be fine! Really. You’ll be bored. All the scans and samples. Nothing serious. Just procedure. You know what it’s like. No point waiting around. We’ll get her home.’
Damian looks concerned.
‘It’s cool, Damian,’ I say. ‘Seriously. Thanks for getting me here. I don’t know what I would have done.’
‘No. I think we should come with,’ he says, slowly.
Dr. Precious moves over to him, and says something really quiet. Vix gives me a sharp, quick glance, but the way Damian studiously doesn’t look at me is more alarming.
I smile uneasily. ‘Is there something I should know?’
‘No, we’re good, come along.’ He hustles me in through the doors. ‘Precious, she’s just living up to her name. Doesn’t like people hanging around when she works, especially civilian hangers-on like Dame’s little girlfriend. Doesn’t really have the clearance to be here. You know she applied for the sponsorship, right? Didn’t make the cut.’
The sound of a car door snapping shut makes me look back.
‘I think she’s jealous of you,’ Andile shakes his head ruefully as Dr. Precious walks in behind us. Beyond the glass doors, the Anglia reverses into an inexorable parabola and out of the Inatec parking lot.
Tendeka
‘So what are you gonna do with all your worldly after you’re gone? Donate it to the street kids? Auction it off? Martyr relics get top price on eBay.’ Toby bounces beside me, facing backwards on the street, so that he nearly crashes into a flower-seller struggling with two plastic buckets bristling with bouquets.
‘I’m dying,’ I tell the flower-seller, who is cursing at Toby, by way of apology. She recoils behind her buckets and the flowers. I can’t tell what they are. The colours blur when I try to focus. ‘No sir, I don’t got no flowers for that!’
‘Too dramatic,’ Toby muses. ‘Cliché. Flowers. Bad. No. I thought you planned all this meticulously. You can’t go whimsical all of a sudden. And, besides, you’re frightening the lady.’
‘She should be frightened. We all should be. Can your friend hook us up? Lerato?’
‘To what?’
‘Remote link-up. So we can transmit your coat’s cameras to the billboards? The city is going to bear witness.’
He looks uncomfortable. ‘Yeah, about that.’
‘You can back out. I don’t mind. Go running to an immunity centre, get your life-saving shot and your arrest warrant all in one, let them fuck you, let them fuck all of us. Just leave me with the coat.’
‘Jesus, all right. Don’t get so worked up.’
‘I’m fine,’ I say, ignoring the smear of bright red on the back of my hand when I wipe my mouth. ‘You still don’t believe it, do you? We’re dying, Toby. Both of us.’
‘See, here’s the thing. I don’t feel like I’m dying, as a matter of fact, I… Jesus motherfuck.’ He catches me as I list forward, bracing me against his chest and his shoulder, laughing. I hadn’t realised how skinny he is.
‘This shit does not agree with you, Tendeka.’
‘It’s my fucking asthma. Accelerating the virus. Fuck, it’s the steroids in my meds. I’m immuno-compromised.’
‘Didn’t Che Guevara have asthma?’ chirps Toby. ‘What is it with you revolutionaries and lung issues?’
‘I can’t be the only one. What about the kids who were there? Old people? This is happening way too fucking fast. Bastards. Fucking bastards. They didn’t think it through.’
‘Hate to blow your big momentous revelatory, but whatever it is, you’re going to have to get to a hospital.’
‘No.’
‘Okay, well, then we have to get away from here. People are staring.’
‘I want them to. They should see.’
‘But you don’t want the cops to come ruin all your fun, right? You don’t want to premature, not on your martyrdom. Trust me. Come on.’ He slips in under my arm and we slope down the street.
‘I’m fucking dying!’ I scream at two young men, about to step into Steers. ‘Pay attention. Open your eyes!’
‘And I have fucking leprosy!’ Toby shouts. ‘And scabies!’
‘Stop it! This is real. Stop fucking around for once in your goddamn life.’
‘Hey, Ten, can you walk on your own?’
He shrugs me half-off, leaves me unbalanced for long enough to admit that I can’t.
‘Thought so. C’mon. Let’s find a locale appropriate to making your last stand.’
I’m forced to sling my arm over his shoulders and stagger on.
Lerato
‘You’ve violated company code, Ms. Mazwai.’
Jane sits sprawled on the couch, her arms across the back, smug, patient. I don’t say anything. Her casualness is what’s really terrifying, more than the dogs panting in creepy tandem, or the man standing behind me with an AK-47, subverting the cosy domesticity of our little scene. I have to confess, I was expecting a blank interrogation room, not a lounge on the penultimate to penthouse floor. I smile, carefully cultivated, loose and easy, slightly rueful. The punch of adrenalin in my gut sharpens everything.
I consciously echo her pose, cheap tricks of body language. She notices and leans forward, irritated. ‘Don’t you have anything to say in your defence?’
I shrug. Laugh, a little. ‘You bust me. What am I supposed to say? I’m sorry? I didn’t think it was such a big deal. Is all this…’ indicating the man with the gun, the dogs, ‘really necessary?’
‘What were you doing in the bathroom?’
I stare at her, amused, puzzled, ignoring the uncomfortable edge of the SIM digging into me, inside. Then spell it out, as if she’s a moron. ‘Okay. If you really want to know, I was taking a dump.’
She waits, lets the silence draw out between us, the loaded kind. In spite of myself, I plunge into it.
‘Bad chicken. Last night. Upset stomach.’
‘So why isn’t this a big deal? Being bust?’
I shrug, look away, bored with the proceedings. ‘Like you’ve never had a little sugar. In fact, as I recall, you smoked that joint with me.’
‘You think that’s what this is about?’
‘Why don’t you tell me what it’s about, Jane? This terrible thing you think I’ve done.’
Another silence, fraught and frigid. Like Jane herself, come to think of it.
‘Do you have to keep doing that? It’s really tacky.’
‘Does it bother you?’
‘I’ve read the same books you have, Jane. The manuals on intimidation techniques. Please. It’s too tedious. Can we just skip to the bit where you accuse me of the heinous crime?’
‘Intention to defect.’
Shit. I knew Stefan was a fucking plant. I knew it. But still, it’s not so bad, not irrecoverable.
She lets a long pause play out before she adds, ‘Corporate sabotage.’
‘What?’ The adrenalin ratchets up a notch. But I don’t let it show. I am the incredulity distilled, made flesh.
‘One count direct involvement. Four conspiracy. Eleven aiding and abetting.’
‘You think I did what?’ I am standing up now, radiant with outrage, doing the maths in my head – they’re way over, which means, maybe, that it’s a bluff. Or that they’re trumping up the charges. The Aito at my knee grumbles a bass warning. ‘This is absurd.’
‘Sit down, please. We have records. Instant messenger chats. Phone calls. Photographs. Our last conversation.’
‘Of what?’ Both dogs are growling now, but I stay standing. I am righteous indignation personified. I am the wrath of the falsely accused.
‘You violated Communique’s trust, your contract.’
‘Please. Where’s this evidence?’