Moxyland (21 page)

   'You activated?' she murmurs behind me, so soft only I can hear, cos we're playing strangers for the moment, until such time as Doyenne decides we're good to make our play. As soon as Twitch has scoped out the lie of the land.

   I don't bother to answer. As if I would have forgotten in the heat. My phone is already blinking blue, logged onto Playnet and legit with the relevant authorities – although unlike my crime-busting colleagues over here, I'm registered under a fake name. It's not necessary, but let's say I've developed a taste for anonymity, for taking on an artificial ID (like Diary isn't an exaggerated persona already). I'm sure it's all going to get terribly confusing. Try to keep up.

   I grab hold of the rails with both hands and swing over the top steps, my coat flaring behind. Julia pushes past me, just another underway annoyance, her boots making sharp cicada clicks on the vibracrete as she vanishes into the cram. I swivel on my heel and prowl over to the newsstand to buy a bottle of water. No sense going into this dehydrated. It's still lank early. Fourteen minutes ahead of schedule. We've got time to kill.

   Doyenne's strict on the punctuality, Twitch told me while we were sitting in the taxi waiting for her to come back from the petrol station loo, cos she has a spastic colon. He was switching through the motions on his rifle, checking the mechanics until the constant clack got to me, and I grabbed his hand to stop him doing it.

   'Leave him alone. It chills him out.' Ibis aka Julia spoke from the front of the car, not even looking round.

   'Well, it's riding me one time.'

   'He needs it. He's OCD.'

   'For fuck's sake. Can't he take meds? Or a hit of sugar?' My luck to latch up with a crew with sufficient medical ailments to fill a doctor's waiting room. And that's not even counting the guy I'm replacing, who broke his collarbone moving a fridge.

   'Nah. Meds blunt his focus. And Doyenne doesn't shine to drugs, so don't talk about whatever you're on now, okay?' She cocked her head over her shoulder, presenting a shadow of profile, just enough so I could see the dark mole at the corner of her lip that makes her mouth look faintly misshapen. 'And besides, he's fourteen. So lay off, okay?'

   'Okay. Kit Kat!' I lifted my hand off his, and the kid went right back into the damn clicking, sliding the ammo clip out, slamming it back in. 'Do your parents know where you're at tonight, Twitch?'

   He looked puzzled, although at least he stopped with the damn clicking for an instant, and then launched straight back into it, not looking up. 'For your information, fuckwit, my mom was the one who hooked me up with Stinger.'

   From the front, Ibis aka Julia snickered.

I take a sip of water and flip casually through the racks, sneaking previews on some of the pushmags, but being particular in not
skeeming
the gaming titles, cos you don't want to be too obvious. Keep it tight.

   'You gonna buy that?' The shop chick, a bovine dumpy blonde, eyes dulled by one too many soapcasts, picks at her teeth with a fingernail, intent on the blurbvert playing on the screen above the till.

'Me? Hmm. No. I don't think so.'

'Well then, skip it.'

   'Hey, I already bought the water. Doesn't that entitle me to browsing rights?'

   'You gotta buy.'

   'Fine.'

   I skim the shelves and grab a dark porn push, way up top, hand it to her to scan and flash my phone at the till. And then I crack the seal and start paging through it in front of her, pausing to show her a grotesque special on page six, cranking the volume up. She grimaces, managing to look even stupider and uglier, and leans back on her stool, pumping up the sound on her soap to try and drown me out.

   I'm enjoying this now. I flick through to find another disturbing combo – oh, don't sweat it, it's all digital re-creations, they wouldn't really force a hyena to mount a nubile teenager.

   Her repulsed reaction, the way I'm playing her, kicks up my rush. It's a sugar–bliss combo, if you were wondering, just enough to remix my experience of the world a little.

   I glance round to check on the mission status. There's no sign of the little OCD monster. Doyenne is standing peering at the map but really scouting out the junction, looking through the screen to the platforms below; Ibis/Julia is sitting primly on a bench, reading a book, her

posture straight as an arrow.

   Someone in the crowd jostles me harder than is politely acceptable, so I nearly drop the pushmag. Often, I get off on the tight; walking so close you can feel the swerve of the air currents between you and the people coming in the opposite direction. And it's always fun to infringe on people's personal space. But the crush is even thicker now, like fucking rush hour or like there's a soccer game on. Last time Orlando Pirates played the city stadium, eight people were fatally squished in this very station.

   I catch a glimpse of a sludge hoodie bobbing away, carried by the surge, and recognise it as Twitch's signature style, or rather signature lack of style. Which means either that he's fucking with me, or that it's time.

   I glance over at the team's positions. The bench is vacant. No visual on Ibis/Julia. Doyenne is heading down the stairs at an easy amble. Nice of them to let me know. I sneak a peek at my phone, which is thrumming insistently with an in-game msg and an attachment of ID images.

   I dump the pushmag in my pocket, saving it for later, and let the throng sweep me towards the lifts, as per our blueprint. It's basic stuff. Ibis/Julia and Doyenne will take either end of the train, working their way down towards each looking for the terrorist called Unity, the one with the dirty bomb, while I cover the platform – and the little shit keeps a bead on all of us from some disused maintenance cube lodged in the ceiling. They got access to a maintenance cube through sheer fluke. Took them eighteen hours solid gamespace play to crack a drug-bust mission, and when they'd fragged every junkie in sight, they found all kinds of useful goodies tucked among their stash, including an access card that unlocks certain gameplaces realworld.

   I click open the folder, flip through the images, supposedly uploaded fresh from the station security cams. Not actually, sorry to disappoint you. It's all pre-scanned. As lucrative as play is, and trust me, Inkubate Inc. is paying Metro bigtime for the rights to play in the underway and set up gameplaces like Twitch's maintenance cube; they're still not allowed to interfere with actual realworld goings on in the public domain, which includes linking to the security cams for our gaming pleasure.

The photo-IDs are, in order:

   A heavy in a gold vinyl tracksuit rubbed shiny with wear or maybe distressed on purpose, with tightly wound blond curls and a jaw designed to shatter all the bones in your fist.

   A shaven-headed girl, around my age, done up all pantsula in pinstripes and carrying a black steel case, which is so blatantly obvious, I dismiss her as a decoy.

   Another macho, business-slick in a suit with a gym bag slung casually over his shoulder, but it's clearly heavy, which is a tad more promising.

   And. Hey, there.

   I reverse direction, grinning. Of course, I'm contractually obliged to let one of the fulltime members of Clan Stinger take the glory, but is it my fault I'm intuitive? If I've encountered the target previously? I send a msg to the crew, but who knows how long they'll take to get back up here. It might be too late by then.

   The people behind me don't take too kindly to me switching against the flow. Some of them have their phones held up at arm's length, beaming laser slogans in all caps above their heads: 'ALL ACCESS' and 'PASSES FOR THE PEOPLE'. Some of the protesters don't smell too fresh, and there's a higher content of street kid per capita than usual.

   And I finally twig why it's so packjammed down here. The protest. Great fucking timing, although maybe that's the point – to make it more challenging.

I shove through the press of bodies back towards the kiosk where the podgy girl is attending to a protester with springy little dreads and a leather bandolier strung with audio chips instead of cartridges that are broadcasting slogans at decibel in most of the official languages.

   'I'm sorry, did I leave my phone here?' I have to shout over the chips, pushing rudely in front of the protester, who
skeefs
me with a dirty look, to get to the counter.

   The apparently not-so-dullard cow ignores me. And what choice do I have, kids? Really? The .44 is already in my hand, it's only a thirty degree flex of my arm to pull it free of the holster and swing it up so it's level with the bridge of her rather neat little nose. 'I'd suggest you surrender the merchandise.'

   The protester squawks and leaps backwards, knocking over a rack of mags, but the resulting crash is drowned out by the electronic chatter of the chips and the protesters shouting and the ambient crowd sounds.

   The cow whimpers. She's gone all pasty, which throws her zits into relief. Cunning bitch. Gotta admire the acting talent. You'd think she was the real deal.

   'I don't have time. Just give it over.'

   She opens her mouth as if to say something useful, but then goldfishes soundlessly.

   'Oh for fuck's sake.' I press the gun against her forehead. 'Three, two…' And sudden she finds her voice.

   'I don't got nothing! Please!'

   'The package?'

   'Take it! Take it!' But she fails to hand anything over, covering her eyes and quivering instead. I'm aware that a space has cleared around me, and my phone is vibrating frantically in my pocket.

   'Just give me the package and I won't have to shoot you,' I say, real slow, so she can't misunderstand. Maybe I got it wrong and it's the hip gangster girl or one of the heavies after all. In which case, I might have blown the whole fucking mission, exposed us too early. Fuck. And now I'm not so sure I looked at the picture properly in the first place. Maybe it was some other ugly fat girl plus wishful thinking on my part. Or maybe she's an unwitting mule.

   I vault over the counter. She shrieks and wedges herself into the corner, weeping now. I pull her down, so that we're out of the limelight, crouched behind the desk. 'Everything's sony, honey, just chill. Stay right there. Don't you move.' I keep the gun on her, hunting around. 'Where's your bag? Where's your fucking bag!'

   She points wordlessly at a turquoise tote on a shelf. I press it into her hands, even though she doesn't want to take it.

   'Open it.'

   'I don't got nothing. I don't.'

   'Did anyone ask you to hold something for them? Or give you something? A present?'

   She's scrabbling in her bag, spilling prettifiers onto the carpet, sobbing so hard her words hitch. 'My… my… boyfriend.'

   'Yeah? What did he give you? Where is it?'

   'Th-this.' She yanks off a plastech keyring attached to the bag's handle – a mini-figurine of Anika, the virtua pop star.

   'Be careful! Shit.' It's not inconceivable that the bomb would fit inside a keyring. I take it from her gingerly and stow it in an inside pocket.

   'Now close your eyes.'

   'Why?'

   'Cos I've been wanting to do this ever since I met you.'

   She shakes her head vigorously, sobbing hard. I shrug. She should have known what she was letting herself in for when she took on the assignment.

I pull the trigger.

   The .44 kicks in my hand with a sharp metallic roar. Which should have been the end of her, only the blobby cow is still shrieking, clawing at the wet gobs splattered across her face. She squeals even louder when her hands come away sticky with sheen. I am way pissed now, kids.

   'What are you doing? You're analogue, baby. You're out. Fucking go down.'

   She holds her hands out to me, all shaky disbelief, and catches me left-field by starting to cry, little pathetic mewlings.

   'Oh. Hey. Everything's sony, okay? It's not… Look.' I'm about to wipe her forehead to show her, but I don't want to get the dye on my BabyStrange, so I grab her by the wrist instead. 'It's purple, see?' Inexplicably, she starts crying harder. 'It's not blood. You don't gush purple. It's just a game. It's icy. Okay?' But she's sobbing so uncontrollably, I don't think I'm getting through.

   I holster the gun and start sliding away from the blubbering girl, making sure I still have the keyring. The hippie with the audio-chip bandolier barges in. 'Bro, that was so uncool.'

   'Hey! She was registered gameplay. It's not my fault she's a rookie.'

   'Oh yeah?' He bends down, comes back with her handbag and dumps out the phone, turns it over to show me. It hasn't been chipped for ingame. It's so outmoded, it wouldn't even support the tech. Shit.

   I hightail it through the crowd, ignoring dreadlock boy's recriminations shouted after me. The protest is going off, it's too thick to move without worming between the bodies, and the amplified chatter is deaf-making. I duck down besides a motobin that's been stopped in its circuit by the human traffic, humming quietly to itself, and check my phone. My msgs display various riffs on 'where the hell are you?' from all three of my clan mates.

   Surprisingly, Ibis/Julia is the most graphic of all of them, threatening my mother with violence if I don't get my skinny ass down there immediately. Maybe I'll take her up on it later.

   But right now I have bigger pilchard to panfry. I skip the rest of the msgs and reload the target list, flipping through the visuals to saggy cow, who is indeed the girl I just fragged in the face, down to the last inflamed zit. This is all seriously dubious.