Bitstream

14.1

Calyx Ward caught wind of the so-called "attack on Sector Twelve" fast – at least, that's how the papers spun it. And people were soon asking about the three hairless chimps dumped in the parking lot, each with Lumina foaming out of their mouths. The questions fizzled out quick, though, because within a week the company issued a statement claiming they were "treating them for deadly diseases as part of an initiative to find cures." Anyone with half a nose could smell that monkeydoo from a mile off – but Calyx Ward was too big, too wired into everything that mattered, for the stink to stick.

She didn't make a direct statement on any potential suspects following the attack – no pictures, no videos, nothing that could tie it back to us. But that didn't mean we weren't careful. For three months, we lived like ghosts, watching every shadow, waiting for the sound of boots outside the motel. I was used to escaping the law back in Neo Arcadia, but that was because the NACP didn't care about anything that happened in the South; here, things were different: more drones, more rules, and, perhaps most importantly, more eyes watching.

By late May, I'd changed my look – an excuse to throw Calyx off, but also to show face at Cormac's funeral. Arden swore by Ol' Clickers for a mohawk, so I let the barber strip me down to sharp fades and a dark green crest, something new to hang my skin on. Fingers grew out her hair and tied it into a braid – said it helped her think, kept the wildness neat without killing it. She called it rustic fugitive; I called it her. Either way, we were dressing up for sadness, not a parade.

That same night, we gathered in the back lot of The Rattlehive, where Fingers had set up a cairn of steel and circuitboard: an old Southside custom, Arden said. You built a tower from the scraps the dead left behind, lit it with whatever power you could scrounge, and let it hum their name until the charge ran dry. Cormac's stacked shrine rose crooked but proud, green LEDs blinking against the dark like stubborn fireflies, his long yellow oilcoat sprung in crucifixion. It wasn't a body, but it was enough to stand for him, enough to draw people who'd owed him laughs, drinks, debts, and bruises. Which, I suppose, was only us four – more if you counted the people that simply showed up for free drinks. We poured out bottles, traded stories, and pretended our voices weren't cracking in the cold. For once, no one mentioned Calyx Ward, or drones, or the way the world was tightening its grip.

And then, like it had been invited, a rabbit came skittering out of the weeds and stopped a few feet from the cairn. I didn't think The Rattlehive had rabbits, and it turned out it didn't. The rabbit belonged to a little girl with black hair who came running after it. She caught up halfway, froze at the sight of all of us standing there, then stayed quiet as if the humming tower demanded silence. The rabbit, though: it didn't flinch. It kept staring at the green light, like it understood something we didn't.

The girl tugged on its lead to leave.

And, amazingly, the rabbit stayed.

At the time, I couldn't say why it struck me so deep. Maybe it was Cormac's story about Elysia and her rabbits. Maybe it was just the strangeness of a creature refusing to run. Either way, watching it linger there in the glow, I felt – against all reason – that it was her. That through the eyes of that rabbit, Elysia was telling Cormac the one thing he never thought he'd hear:

I forgive you.

I know it sounds silly, maybe even a little hammy, but I like to think there is a greater God pulling cosmic strings, even if those strings don't always align so well.

By July, Calyx Ward had already patched up the subsector and slotted in a replacement for Carrow. We knew because the Lumina trucks were back on schedule, rumbling through Paxson for their pick-ups at Sector Twelve; still no one had come pounding at the motel door – the place we'd been haunting like squatters. Dance took it as the perfect opening to pitch a new plan, something he'd been sharpening over months of research that, thankfully, didn't involve bribing a fixer with a creepy-looking chimp named Chitters. We agreed to meet at All Drops, partly because the train noise over The Rattlehive made it impossible to think at times, and partly because it carried that kind of stink you didn't stay in unless you had a reason.

Now here I am, glass empty in my hand, and I've realised I've grown to enjoy the smell, and taste, of alcohol a lot more.

Though as long as I don't get too heavy with it, I should be A-OK.

Fingers and I arrived in the dark booth in the corner; it's early so there aren't many people out except for some men in coveralls shaking off their shifts, a pair of women still in club makeup with their heels kicked off under the table, and a bartender who looks like he'd rather be anywhere else. The place still feels sticky in a way that soap can't fix. A lightbulb hums overhead, and every time it switches off my eyes drag back to the warped paneling on the wall, where someone once carved their initials and then tried to burn them out with a lighter.

After five minutes, the door slides open, and in comes Dance, Vander, and, to my surprise, Arden. I didn't think she'd be coming along. Not that I mind; it's just that she's not entirely with the whole 'dating scene' between Fingers and me. At least, I don't think she is. She's been kind of… well, there's a word for it.

They slide into the booth across from us, Dance first, his jacket still dripping from the rain. Vander shoulders in after, smelling faintly of oil and smoke. He has a new stick of robin's-egg-blue lipstick, and he massages it gently across his lips in soothing 8s. It's been a while since I've seen him do that. Still don't know what the deal with that is. Not that I care. And finally Arden slouches down with her arm hanging back over the seat, staring at me directly without a problem in the world.

Dance rubs his hands together, as if warming up to the pitch. "Al-roightyyyy," he says. "Three months layin' low is three months too long. Calyx patched the hole, sure, but I've been diggin'. And what I've found…" His eyes flick from one of us to the next. "... there's fuck-all we can do to break in, mate."

We exchange glares, confused.

"What do you mean there's fuck-all?" asks Fingers. "I thought you said you had something big?"

Dance whips out his brickie. "Oh, I do, but you might not like it."

A sigh. "Spit it out." Fingers' braid scratches the vinyl as she leans forward.

I expect Dance to pull out the holo-projector from under the brickie and display some bright cyan map of the logistics station, but instead he reaches into his inside jacket pocket and brings out a piece of paper – and I mean a literal piece: snipped from the morning's daily. He places the piece of paper in the middle of the table, and when I lean forward I see the words 'Loading Bay Operative—Night Intake (Temp-to-Perm)'. Had this been several months ago, I might have cocked an eyebrow and asked Dance to elaborate further on what he meant by something this cryptic, but I clock it well before he has to utter a word of explanation.

"You want us to get hired as loading-bay operatives." I don't bother hiding the flatness in my voice.

Dance nods. "Bingo. When did you switch on, mate? But yeah, temp slot: night intake. You get on the floor, you learn the flows. Nobody looks twice at temps in grey jumpsuits."

Fingers grunts. "And who's doing the background checks, then? Calyx runs scanners on everything that blinks."

"Standard stuff," Dance says. "ID, which we have covered by Gossamer Sig, a half-hour safety induction, a quick health screen. Nothing forensic. It's not a security-clearance doozie. Agencies push people into those roles all the time. Arden used to work for 'em, so she knows all the buzz to the interview questions."

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Arden lifts a shoulder. "They don't care much about the substance of your answers – only that it goes by the book. So you rehearse, you say what the corporate likes to hear, and you get the job. That simple."

"How many job openings are there?" I ask.

"Two," says Dance. "Enough for rotation. One inside, one floater. Swap after a week, mate. Keeps the pattern thinnnnnnnn."

Vander tucks the lipstick back into his sleeve pocket. "So er who's first through the door then? Rerk, paper, scissors?"

"No games," Fingers says. "This is real. We can't afford someone getting cocky on their first night."

Arden folds her hands, eyes steady. "I'll call the agency tonight. There's a temp window; they need paperwork, a basic ID scan, and a short phone interview. I'll frame it as me sponsoring the placements – keeps HR comfortable since they already know me and I have a pretty good record of not being a cunt. They'll want to see a CV, but nothing fancy. I can draft two that read clean and pretty much pass all the criteria."

"Well, you'll only have to draft one, Scarier-Version-of-Morgan," says Dance. He slaps Vander on the back. "Big Man here has a lot of blue-collar experience that'll make him overqualified for the job, but he'll have no issue takin' the paycut. That right, buddy?"

A silence falls. Far off I can hear the sound of a dog barking as the day turns on its noontime axis.

"Surrpose it's not a berd idea," Vander says finally, "but who am I er partnering up with?"

"Not you anyway, Dance," Fingers says. "You can't keep your mouth shut when things get serious. Especially when you're with Vander."

"Flat on the nose with that one," Dance says. "Plan needs a netrunner on the inside – always does. There's a hundred-odd rigs through that yard; only a handful head for the Capital, the rest do the Paxson runs. Think of Sloan Harrow's logistical shard as a signed routing key: live manifests, short-lived scheduling tokens, an admin handoff hook. Slot it into the right terminal and you can preview convoys, slip a tiny, legit-lookin' nudge through during a sync window. We lay low at the Orion Scrubland, you reroute it to follow that path, stop it in place, hit it with the TOK shard to open the bay once it's in transit-tolerance, and – she'll be right, mate – we ride it into the Capital. Quiet, clean. No fireworks."

"That's a long way of saying, 'This is Mono's problem,'" I say, dragging my hand down my face. "And let me guess: you also just get to sit tight like last time?"

"I'm too mouthy, remember?" Dance cracks a grin, and I crack one back at him, though mine is much more subtle; his is, you know, shit-eating. He leans back on his seat, folding his arms. "Questions?"

Immediately, Fingers says, "On background checks: What if HR digs deeper?"

"Don't have to worry about that," says Arden flatly, flicking up a lighter and lighting a cigarette I didn't even notice she had. "It's not a serious role. Borderline entry-level. Basic checks. Given that I'm a past employee and have put people up before, it'll limit red flags. Just change your IDs, rehearse interview answers, keep it corporate calm. If someone asks specifics you don't have, don't invent. Say you're reliable, nights are fine, that's it."

"They don't check references?" I ask.

"They can," Arden says, "but that's normally when someone is already suspicious. Just don't bomb and they'll take my word for it, and most importantly, your word."

Vander butts in with a question of his own: "What if er using the shard leaves a log somewhere? If Monner programmes the trucks to travel through the Orion Scrubland, and also programmes them to stop as if for a er pick-up, won't Slern's computer see it?"

Dance says, "Yeah, Sloan's clever, mate. But managers watch trends, not one-off quibbles. If the requested tweak looks like a legit operational wobble, Sloan's machine files it as noise."

Fingers crosses her arms, looking at her sister with grave indifference. "Sounds like we're counting on them being lazy about the little stuff, Bug."

"Not lazy," Arden corrects, sounding a touch unnerved. "Optimised. Throughput matters. They tune alerts to avoid choking on false positives. You exploit that human design choice, not a bug. Still, there's a scarier vector: the shard action creates a paper trail that a human auditor could eyeball later. That's why you keep your window tight and your change plausible." She pins us with that cigarette-slow look, then drops the match into an ashtray that's seen better weeks.

"You alright?" Fingers asks suddenly.

"Fine," Arden says. "Just a little tired. Want a drink?"

"I'll pass for now," she says. "'Preciate it though, sis. Wouldn't be able to do this without you."

"I've always thought Ward was a fucking bitch anyway," Arden says. "Don't get me wrong: she has some good practices. Like preventing mass shootings by embedding tech scanners for weaponry in pretty much every place that's registered for business. That definitely eases the tension most days. But, Jesus, she has the Capital blocked off from the rest of society like some control freak in a glass castle. Face everywhere, like she thinks she's some corporate dragon."

"Trust me," I say, "she's much worse than a control freak. And I'll murder that bitch myself."

"Keep your voice down," Arden says matter-of-factly. "You don't know who could be listening."

I take that statement at face value; there's bound to be some truth to it, after all. "Right," I say. "Sorry."

Arden glances at each of us, slow, the way someone measures the weight of their sins in a pocket. "And Rhea," she says, and the room narrows in on her voice, "don't let the job make you a different person. You work nights; you come home. You keep the line between work and living."

"Will I have to work there for long?" I ask.

"Just till the end of the month, mate," Dance says. "When the trucks head for Sector Twelve for a fresh pick-up. You hobble inside the station as a worker, get Sloan's shard, re-code the trucks to match up with Carrow's old security protocol, re-programme the route to stop the convoy in the middle of the Orion Scrubland." He makes this sound like a shopping list. "The AI stops, we use Carrow's TOK key to get inside. Then in we go, riding it straight into the Capital. Once inside we'll use Sloan's shard to navigate it off to another desolate area, sneak out, and let the convoy carry out its duties from there. Simple cheese, mate."

Fingers makes a sound that isn't quite a laugh. "And pretty as that sounds, how the hell do we get the shard?"

"That's the fun part," says Dance. "Since I don't exactly have an inside scannery-doo of the place on my brickie, you'll need to actually figure this out over the course of working there. Learn where she keeps it, how it's used, but you won't have to snatch it off her directly this time."

"Why's that?" I ask.

Dance reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small data shard, and it takes me less than a second to realise that it is, in fact, another quick-hack. He tilts it between his fingers as though it's a precious coin, and for a second the bar goes quiet enough that you can hear the lightbulb complain. "That," he says, "isn't the shard we want. It's the mirror. Oooh-hoo-hoo, oh yes." He sounds like Cormac all of sudden.

"A mirror?" I say.

Dance smiles, but his eyes don't. "Call it what you like. Technical name's Doppelcast Routineeeee, but that sounds boring on a brickie, mate. Basically, it lets you project a shard signature onto a dummy shell. You don't steal Sloan's shard out of her locker like some dookie. You make the system believe the shell is Sloan's shard long enough to get a truck to obey the new routing. The real shard can sit right where it is, untouched."

I blink slow. "So it's a fake identity. Temporary. A spoof."

"Temporary and surgical," Dance says. "You mirror the auth token – seal numbers, handshake metadata, the works – onto a clean chassis. Forensics sees the right signature, the robot thinks it's home, the route AI signs off, and the convoy goes where we tell it." He tosses it over to me and I catch it without a problem. I take out my neural wire and plug it into the shard; after it uploads, 'Doppelcast Routine' pops up in my quick-hack list, taking the final slot. If I want any more quick-hacks then I'll definitely need an upgrade, or at least I'll have to do some reorganising and swap out anything I don't need, depending on the job.

"And keep your visor handy," Dance says, "not sure they'll let you wear that on the floor. That's for you and Vander to figure out and for me to complain about if you two don't pull it off smoothly." He chuckles, and I chuckle back.

The plan is full of holes and teeth and bright things that will cut you if you laugh at them. It's also the nearest thing to a way out that isn't a fugitive's prayer. We set our teeth, like people do before jumping into cold water.

Soon, I tell myself, I put on boring clothes and walk through a front door. Soon, I learn a scanner and practice the small, faithful gestures that make a person believable and professional.

Boy, I haven't had a job interview in almost a century.