Company Town (7 page)

Of course, Síofra managed just fine. He showed up outside Tower One at four thirty in the morning bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Like everything else about him, even his running form was annoyingly perfect. He kept his chin up and his back straight throughout the run. He breathed evenly and smoothly and carried on a conversation without any issues. At no point did he complain of a stitch in his side, or a bone spur in his heel, or tension in his quads. Nor did he suggest that they stretch their calves first, or warm up, or anything like that. He just started running.

A botfly followed them the entire way.

“Do we really need that?” Hwa asked. “We can ping for help, no problem, if something happens.” She gestured at the empty causeway. “Not that anything's going to happen.”

“What if you have a seizure?” her boss asked.

Hwa almost pulled up short. It took real and sustained effort not to. She kept her eyes on the pavement, instead. They had talked about her condition only once. Most people never brought it up. Maybe that was a Canadian thing. After all, her boss had worked all over the world. They were probably a lot less polite in other places.

“My condition's in my halo,” she muttered.

“Pardon?”

“My halo has all my medical info,” she said, a little louder this time. She shook her watch. “If my specs detect a change in my eye movement, they broadcast my status on the emergency layer. Everyone can see it. Everyone with the right eyes, anyway.”

“But you don't wear your specs when you're running,” he said, and pulled forward.

The route took them along the Demasduwit Causeway, around Tower Two, down the Sinclair Causeway, and back to Tower Two. New ads on new surfaces greeted them as they passed. The new city departments each had their own cuddly mascot AI that tried to remind Hwa about what she needed for her new apartment. They waved to her from pop-up carts and shop windows. They showed her sales on merchandise from brands she didn't recognize, brands Lynch had partnered with. New Arcadia was a captive audience, after all; the whole city was like one big focus group. She did her best to ignore the ads. Even if she were interested, she had no time to pay attention. It was a school day, which meant Hwa had to scope New Arcadia Secondary before Joel Lynch arrived for class. This meant showering and dressing in the locker room, which meant she had to finish at a certain time, which meant eating on schedule, too. If she ate before the run, she tended to throw up.

She was going to explain all this, when Síofra slowed down and pulled up to Hwa's favourite 24-hour cart and held up two fingers. “Two Number Sixes,” he said. He stood first one one leg and then another, pulling his calf up behind him as he did. From behind the counter, old Jorge squinted at him until Hwa jogged up to join him. Then he smiled.

“You have a friend!” He made it sound like she'd just run a marathon. Which it felt like she had—keeping up with Síofra had left her legs trembling and her skin dripping.

“He's my boss.” She leaned over and spat out some of the phlegm that had boiled up to her throat during the run. “What he said. And peameal.” She blinked at Síofra through sweat. He was looking away, probably reading something in his lenses. One of his legs jagged up and down, seemingly without his knowledge. “You like peameal?”

“Sorry?”

“Peameal. Bacon. Do you like it? They print it special here.”

“Oh. I suppose.”

She glanced at Jorge. “Peameal. On the side.”

Jorge handed them their coffees while the rest of the breakfast cooked. Now the city was waking up, and the riggers joining the morning shift were on their way to the platform. A few of them stood blinking at the other carts as they waited for them to open up.

“How did you know my order?” Hwa asked.

Síofra rolled his neck. It crunched. He was avoiding the answer. Hwa already suspected what he would say. Finally, he said it. “I see the purchases you make with the corporate currency.”

She scowled. “I don't always have the eggs baked in avocado, you know. Sometimes I have green juice.”

“Not since the cucumbers went out of season.”

Hwa stared. “You're stalking me.”

“I'm not stalking you. This is just how Lynch does things. We know what all our people buy in the canteen at lunch, because they use our watches to do it. It helps us know what food to buy. That way everyone can have their favourite thing. The schools here do the same thing—it informs the farm floors what to grow. This is no different.”

Hwa sighed. “I miss being union.”

*   *   *

Joel Lynch's vehicle drove him to the school's main entrance exactly fifteen minutes before the first bell. Hwa stood waiting for him outside the doors. He waved their way in—the school still did not recognize her face, years after she'd dropped out—and smirked at her.

“How are your legs?” he asked.

“Christ, does my boss tell you
everything
?”

“Daniel just said I should go easy on you, today!” Joel tried hard to look innocent. “And that maybe we didn't have to do leg day today, if you didn't really want to.”

“You trying to get out of your workout?”

“Oh, no! Not at all! I was just thinking that—”

“Good, because we're still doing leg day. My job is protecting you, and how I protect you is making you better able to protect yourself. Somebody tries to take you, I need you to crush his instep with one kick and then run like hell. Both of which involve your legs.”

“So, leg day.”

Hwa nodded. “Leg day.”

“You can crush someone's instep with one kick?”

Hwa rolled her eyes and hoped her specs caught it. “Of course I can,” she subvocalized.

“I think I'd pay good money to see that.”

“Well, it's a good thing I'm on the payroll, then.”

The school day proceeded just like all the others. Announcements. Lectures. Worksheets. French. Past imperfect, future imperfect. Lunch. People staring at Joel, then sending each other quick messages. Hwa saw it all in the specs—the messages drifting across her vision like dandelion fairies. In her vision, the messages turned red when Joel's name came up. For the most part, it didn't. While she wore the uniform and took the classes just like the other students, they knew why she was there. They knew she was watching. They knew about her old job.

“Hwa?”

Hwa turned away from the station where Joel was attempting squats. Hanna Oleson wore last year's volleyball t-shirt and mismatched socks. She also had a wicked bruise on her left arm. And she wouldn't quite look Hwa in the eye.

“Yeah?” Hwa asked.

“Coach says you guys can have the leg press first.”

“Oh, good. Thanks.” She made Hanna meet her gaze. The other girl's eyes were bleary, red-rimmed. Shit. “What happened to your arm?”

“Oh, um … I fell?” Hanna weakly flailed the injured arm. “During practise? And someone pulled me up? Too hard?”

Hwa nodded slowly. “Right. Sure. That happens.”

Hanna smiled. It came on sudden and bright. Too sudden. Too bright. “Everything's fine, now.”

Hwa moved, and Hanna shuffled away to join the volleyball team. She turned back to Joel. He'd already put the weights down. She was about to say something about his slacking off, when he asked: “Do you know her?”

Hwa turned and looked at Hanna. She stood a little apart from the others, tugging a sweatshirt on over her bruised arm. She took eye drops from the pocket and applied them first to one eye, and then the other. “I know her mother,” Hwa said.

*   *   *

Mollie Oleson looked a little rounder than Hwa remembered her. She couldn't remember their last appointment together, which meant it had probably happened months ago. After that time Angel choked her out. Mollie was more of a catch-as-catch-can kind of operator—she only listed herself as available to the USWC 314 when she felt like it. It kept her dues low and her involvement minimal. But as a member she was entitled to the same protection as a full-timer.

Hwa sidled up to her in the children's section of the Benevolent Irish Society charity shop. Mollie stood hanging little baggies of old fabtoys on a pegboard. “We close in fifteen minutes,” she said, under her breath.

“Even for me?” Hwa asked.

“Hwa!” Mollie beamed, and threw her arms around Hwa. Like her daughter, she was one of those women who really only looked pretty when she was happy. Unlike her daughter, she was good at faking it.

“What are you at?”

“I got a new place,” Hwa said. “Thought it was time for some new stuff.”

Mollie's smile faltered. “Oh, yeah…” She adjusted a stuffed polar bear on a shelf so that it faced forward. “How's that going? Working for the Lynches, I mean?”

“The little one is all right,” Hwa said. “Skinny little bugger. I'm training him. He's in for a trimming.”

Mollie gave a terse little smile. “Well, good luck to you. About time you got out of the game, I'd say. A girl your age should be thinking about the future. You don't want to wind up…” She gestured around the store, rather than finishing the sentence.

“I saw Hanna at school, today. Made me think to come here.”

Mollie's hands stilled their work. “Oh? How was she? I haven't seen her since this morning.” She looked out the window to the autumn darkness. “Closing shift, and all.”

Hwa nodded. “She's good.” She licked her lips. It was worth a shot. She had to try. “Her boyfriend's a bit of a dick, though.”

Mollie laughed. “Hanna doesn't have a boyfriend! She has no time, between school and volleyball and her job.”

“Her job?”

“Skipper's,” Mollie said. “You know, taking orders, bussing tables, the like. It's not much, but it's a job.”

“Right,” Hwa said. “Well, my mistake. I guess that guy was just flirting with her.”

“Well, I'll give you the employee discount, just for sharing that little tidbit. Now I have something to tease her with, b'y?”

“Oh, don't do that,” Hwa said. “I don't want her to know I told on her.”

*   *   *

At home, Hwa used her Lynch employee log-in to access the Prefect city management system. Lynch installed it overnight during a presumed brownout, using a day-zero exploit to deliver the viral load that was their surveillance overlay. It was easier than doing individual installations, Síofra had explained to her. Some kids in what was once part of Russia had used a similar exploit to gain access to a Lynch reactor in Kansas. That was fifteen years ago.

Now it was a shiny interface that followed Hwa wherever she went. Or rather, wherever she let it. Her refrigerator and her washroom mirror were both too old for it. So it lived in her specs, and in the display unit Lynch insisted on outfitting her with. That made it the most expensive thing in what was a very cheap studio apartment.

“Prefect, show me Oleson, Hanna,” she said.

The system shuffled through profiles until it landed on two possibilities, each fogged over. One was Hanna. The other was a woman by the name of Anna Olsen. Maybe it thought Hwa had misspoken.

“Option one.” Hanna's profile became transparent as Anna's vanished. It solidified across the display, all the photos and numbers and maps hanging and shimmering in Hwa's vision. She squinted. “Dimmer.”

Hanna's profile dimmed slightly, and Hwa could finally get a real look at it. Like Hwa, Hanna lived in Tower One. She'd been picked up once on a shoplifting charge, two years ago. Hwa raised her hands and gestured through all the points at which facial identification had identified Hanna in the last forty-eight hours. Deeper than that, and she'd need archival access.

“Prefect, show me this person's network.”

Other faces bloomed around Hanna's. They orbited her face slowly, like satellites. Hwa scrolled through them with two fingers. She recognized most of them from school.

“Any on the hot list?”

It took a moment for Prefect's algorithms to find the likely violent offenders around Hanna. But Hanna's dad popped up immediately. That made sense. Mollie hadn't left him; she enjoyed their times together so much. They lived in different towers, now, which helped.

There was another name on the list. Jared Pullman. He was twenty-three. He'd been busted for boosters; there was also a pending assault charge at the offtrack-betting arcade where he worked. In his photo, his eyes were very, very red. “Goddamn it,” Hwa muttered.

But before pursuing him, she needed to call Skipper's. Rule them out. “Hi, is Hanna there?”

“Hanna doesn't work here anymore.” Hwa heard beeping. The sounds of fryer alarms going off. Music. “Hello?”

Hwa ended the call.

There was Hanna on the Acoutsina Causeway, walking toward Tower One. The image was time-stamped after volleyball practise. Speed-trap checked her entering a ride in the driverless lane at 18:30. Five minutes later, she was gone. Wherever she was now, there were no cameras.

“Prefect, search this vehicle and this face together.”

A long pause.
“Archive access required.”

For a fleeting moment, Hwa regretted the fact that Prefect was not a human being she could intimidate. “Is there a record in the archives?”

“Archive access required.”

Hwa growled a little to herself. She popped up off the floor and began to pace. She walked through the projections of Hanna's face, sliding the ribbon of stills and clips until she hit the top of the list. Today was Monday. If Hanna had sustained her injury on Friday night, then Hwa was out of luck. But Mollie had said she worked all weekend. Maybe that meant—

“What are you doing?”

Hwa startled. “Jesus Christ, stop doing that!”

“Doing what?”
Síofra was trying to sound innocent. It wasn't working.