“Need you to examine some tech. We cool?”
He twitches frantically, head jerking up and down in my arms.
Unmoving hands, nails neatly polished in pink and gold.
“Cool.”
I let him go and he falls forward, gasping for breath, arms shaking against the counter. Johnny keeps shuffling woks at the stove, up early for the late-night crowd. The smell of noodles hits my nose, setting off hunger pangs that almost double me over. I can feel the adrenaline shakes threatening to rise, and I force my voice steady by pure will alone.
“Johnny, gimme a bowl, yeah? A big one?”
A primordial mass of noodles emerges from the bustling chaos, steam rising from it like the aftermath of an eruption. A pair of miniature megaspire chopsticks juts out from the tangle of garlic-covered strands.
“Thanks. After you, Jase.”
Jase rubs his neck and scowls at Johnny, then walks over to a blue door marked “Storage.” He pulls it open, revealing a cramped storeroom, barely four meters long by two meters wide, stuffed with boxes of ingredients and cookware on thin wire shelves. Shuffling past several piles of cleaning supplies, he pauses for an instant, like he’s catching his breath.
“Wouldn’t recommend it, son.”
Johnny’s voice seems almost amused, but deadly experience lurks in his baritone.
“Girl’s quicker’n you. Besides, she’s got a right. Op went sour, friend’s dead. Time for answers.”
Jase snorts, then takes a last step to the shelf in the back.
“Bah. I wasn’t going to do anything. Go back to your cooking, old man.”
Johnny chuckles and continues his endless culinary ballet. I wrench my blade from the counter and sheathe it, then follow Jase into the storeroom, slurping down noodles in huge bites. Passing the shelf he stopped at, I glance over, and start giggling, unable to control my emotions.
“Oh, Jase, really? Pepper spray? That’s, like, one of the first psych-secs in endgame. Heck, they have nonlethals in Candyland.”
I squirt a dab onto my noodles to spice them up, not that Johnny’s noodles need it, but more for the appearance of things. Jase scowls, then swings the shelving unit out on noiseless hinges. A large room filled with tables, electronics in various states of disarray on them, lies beyond.
“This isn’t the Game, Ash; you tried to choke me! What the hell happened on that boat?”
He slouches into a chair and fiddles with a microboard. I walk into the room, closing the shelving door behind me, shoving more noodles into my mouth. I wish I could taste them through my anger.
“I wasn’t going to kill you, you idiot. You know me better than that. You’re like my second little brother.”
“Tell that to my trachea,” he sulks. I ignore it. I know exactly how much pressure is required to crush Jase’s trachea, and I wasn’t even close.
“Tell me straight. You swear it was a standard contract? Nothing alt?”
“On my life, Ash. Sawyer sent me a drone, said they needed a box from the silkies, left an intel stick. You know everything I do.” He laughs bitterly. “Probably more.”
Sounds like typical Sawyer. He loves his fucking spook games. Must be why the gummies put him in charge of their intel branch.
“Had to be sure. Sorry. You ever seen anything like this before?”
I pull the shattered haphood out from underneath my hoodie and hand it to him, outer shell held together by the web of circuitry beneath. He turns it around in his hands, a spark of interest flaring in his eyes.
“That’s the new Golgbank haphood. Well, what’s left of one. They’ve been advertising it everywhere. Supposed to have the best fidelity on the market, true one-to-one for every sense, something to do with accessing nerve clusters in a new way. Ship date isn’t for another week or two; most places are already preordered out of stock.”
“Yeah, well, looks like they’ve been shipping some out early. It doesn’t make any sense, Jase, Brand being on that boat. She’s been missing from the Game for over two weeks, and she doesn’t run gray ops. I would’ve known. She tried to kill me. Never said a word. She was wearing one of those.”
Jase frowns.
“She didn’t recognize you? Like, at all?”
I put my empty bowl down on one of the tables and shiver, hugging myself.
“It was inside her mind, Jase. Little tendrils, burrowing into her head. It was like she never even saw me, the entire time she was trying to cut my throat. I kept calling her name but… nothing. Nothing.”
“That’s pretty fucking weird. Their ads don’t mention anything about mind control. I think I’d remember that disclaimer.”
“Focus, Jase. I met Brand a couple times before, in the real. She knew me.”
I pause, thinking back to lunch on a sunny day, wandering a gummy mall, laughing with her at what was considered “style.” What it felt like to be normal, even if it was just for a couple hours, even if it was only as normal as a brown kid in a dryburb could ever feel.
“She was nice, lived up the coast a bit. Inland, with the burbies. Her parents had no idea she was a top-tier Gamer, they just thought she was really into tech and staying fit, studying for their Missionary. They wanted her to become a Preacher’s assistant, wear one of those stupid lightrobes and sensor halos.” My voice cracks, but I ignore it. “I was one of the only people who knew who she really was. There’s no way she would’ve attacked me without talking, and there’s absolutely no way she’d be working for silkies on an op.”
I shiver again.
“I tried to disable her, Jase. Threw her against a wall, to knock her out. It broke whatever was controlling her. Broke her too. I watched her die in front of me.”
“Damn, Ash, I’m sorry. Believe me, I had no idea.”
“I know… and I’m sorry about earlier. It’s just… fuck… Her eyes…”
I turn away, not wanting to Jase to see me cry, see my weakness. The room falls silent. Eventually, I compose myself and turn back around.
“I want to know what’s in that hood, Jase, and you’re the only person I trust who might be good enough to tell me.”
The ghost of a grin flashes across his face, reddening his cheeks, and I’m reminded again of just how young he really is.
“Well, you busted this thing up pretty good, but the central memory clusters look fairly intact. Let’s see what Golgbank has tucked away in here.” He flips on a pair of custom AR work glasses festooned with strange circuit boards, almost like a digital tribal mask. His dreads stick out every which way behind the hacked-together asynchrony of his glass, and he grabs a multitool, flipping out a screwdriver. “You might want to go snag some more food. This could take a bit of time, depending on how good their IP protection is.”
“Thanks, Jase.”
He nods and starts dismantling the outer shell of the haphood, multitool moving dexterously from point to point on the crazed surface. I get up and wander back out into the main room. Johnny motions me over to the counter next to him, and points at a stack of small cartons. Their cheap cardboard sides are emblazoned with garish red lettering. I pick one up, and he immediately dumps it full of noodles, flipping the empty wok into the sink. It lands with a small crash.
“For your mom.”
He nods at another one, and we repeat the process.
“For you. You doing okay?”
I want to tell him no, let out the grief and rage, but this is Ditchtown, so I nod back.
“I’ll manage.”
Johnny’s eyes go distant, lost in memory.
“You remind me of her. Before.” He snaps back to focus, a switch flipping. “Go see her. Kid’ll be busy for a while.”
“How much do I owe you?”
“Same as always. Tell her hello. Miss her.”