CHAPTER 19. Uptime and Downtime

“What the hell happened?” I managed to say, half rasping and half whispering. I felt sweaty and rancid. I looked around the tall, darkened corridor, expecting armed guards rattling toward us with their monstrous LESS LETHAL weapons. But all was quiet. There was no one in this hallway except for a janitor at the far end pushing a cart, doing everything he could to ignore us.

“Advanced server,” Linney said and spat blood onto the shining floor. “The analog signals coming through the net port mess with our physiology.”

“But you broke all the ice. It shouldn’t have hurt us.”

“Doesn’t matter. Restoration Consulting makes it painful. It's their signature”

“Did they trace us?” I looked around. I could swear I heard the rotors of drones. Though maybe it was just ringing in my ears from the impact with the augmented server. COME FIND ME pulsed more insistently now.

“I don’t think so,” Linney said, looking at something glowing on the skin on her forearm, some subcutaneous display.

I helped her to her feet, and she spooled in the cables.

“Are you all right?” I said.

She nodded. “You seem better.”

I did feel a touch better. “Maybe it’s the fabricytes.”

She smiled. “Are you trying to say you feel like you were dying?”

I shrugged and put my arm around her shoulder without thinking about it. I almost took it back again but she crushed herself against me, burying her face in the crook between my chest and my armpit.

“You smell good,” she said. “Just hold me for a sec, OK?”

We stood there, in the silence and poor light. The janitor’s cart squeaked as it neared us. He tried not to look at us but eventually failed and lifted his head.

“Cute couple,” he said, and pushed his cart on by. That seemed to rouse Linney, and she gently pushed herself away from my chest with the palms of her hands flat against my jacket.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said. We started to make our way down the corridor but she stumbled and leaned against the wall. I caught her, let her put her weight on me as we continued toward the main hall. I was hoping that if we continued to move toward the exit, that would read as less suspicious.

As we got to the main hall, she straightened and patted me on the forearm to let me know that she didn’t need me to take her weight anymore. We sauntered into the atrium, all casual-like, and made for the exit lane to the right of the retinal scanners and armed guards.

There was no sign of the guard I had sent tumbling down the stairs earlier. I felt like were going to make it.

Sudden, bright pain cracked through my eyes.

COME FIND ME COME FIND ME

COME FIND ME COME FIND ME

I covered them with my hand, as if trying to shade them from the sun, but was impossible to stop the bright light from penetrating. The words burned into my skull, in both eyes now. It was painful to see them, like putting a hot tungsten filament right up to my eyes. I couldn’t focus enough to move on my own.

COME FIND ME COME FIND ME

Closing my eyes didn’t help but I did it anyway. I couldn’t see anything.

I felt Linney take hold of my hand, felt her guide me.

I heard some gruff voice mutter, “What’s the matter with him?”

“He’s sick,” Linney said. “I’m taking him home.”

Out in the sea air, I relied on Linney to guide me away from Restoration Consulting’s headquarters and back to the BRUTE station. I heard her negotiating with the ticket agent.

Once we were tucked into the dirty, high-backed plush seats, the pulsing in my eyes became somewhat less instrusive. I opened them, could almost concentrate.

“What’s wrong?” Linney said, offering me a compostable bottle full of clear water that she’d purchased from somewhere. I cracked the hard plastic seal, then soft foil seal, and lastly the gummy cellulose seal, and took a long pull of the totally inoffensive and neutral-tasting water.

“There’s something in my eye,” I said, unsure of whether I was trying to make a joke or about to open up to her.

“Seems a bit worse than that,” she deadpanned, giving me the option of continuing to joke around or tell her more. That was one of the things I liked about Linney. She reserved judgment at least for a time. She seemed like she would be understanding of my failings. Maybe she wouldn’t even care that my skill at breaking ice could be traced to my implants and not my natural skill.

“Listen,” I said, making my voice serious. “It’s nothing.”

I felt disappointment in my gut. I wanted to tell her. At this point, I was ready to admit to her that I wasn’t a hotshot runner who could break a Ludo in eleven hours on the first try or escape a Neural Python with a defective water strider.

It was simply that I didn’t want to tell her about the messages. She might think I was unstable. She might think I was in love with Freya. She might not want to see any more of me.

Withholding that secret from her made me feel distant, and we rode the rest of the way back to the central city in silence. She looked out the window, and I looked at my fellow passengers. Or closed my eyes.

My shoulder wasn’t touching Linney. She was curled up, away from me, the few inches separating us feeling impossible to cross.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

As the BRUTE pulled into the station in Mint Hill, where Linney kept her apartment in a high-rise, I said, “I’m sorry.”

She just looked at me. She didn’t say anything.

“I want to tell you,” I said.

“So why don’t you?” she said. It sounded pained.

“I’m scared. Can we get something to eat?”

She cocked her head at me. “I don’t feel like eating right now,” she said.

“Can we go somewhere quiet, then?”

We were stepping down from the BRUTE. She took my hand, hesitantly. We stood in the darkness of the station. “Is it quiet enough, here?” she said.

I nodded. I spoke softly. She already knew that I had come to Carthage to look for a childhood friend, a girl, but I explained everything I knew about the White Tree clinical trials and Freya being marked as deceased. I told her about Dr. Rashida Qin’s scan and the strange White Tree-FUTUR Design eyes that had been implanted in place of my biological eyes when I was a child. I admitted that they gave me some extra strength as a runner. Finally, I told her about the words COME FIND ME that had appeared to me on the riverbank in my hometown and never fully went away. I told her that they had become more intense in Southport, and were better now.

My chest ached, but it was the ache of a good workout. I felt relieved of a burden. And Linney was still here. She moved closer to my chest, allowed me to hold her. “I’m glad you told me,” she whispered.

“I was scared you’d run away.”

“Why?”

I shrugged.

“Because you’re loyal to your friend?” she said and looked up at me, tears starting to rim her eyes.

I nodded.

“I love that you care so much for your childhood best friend that you’d come to the city and get involved with all us miscreants just to find her. I think it says a lot about your character, Jasper Rawls.”

My full name coming from her lips filled me with a deep pride. It was only when she lifted her finger to wipe the moisture from my eyelid that I realized I was crying as well.

“Your cybernetic eyes even cry,” she said.

“Top of the line,” I said. I held her there, her lips slightly parted. “I want to kiss you,” I said.

Then she was kissing me, and I felt her warmth and desire. For a moment it was like netspace, that headlong, breakneck, amethyst-colored neon rush.

I took a deep breath as we parted.

“Hey,” she said. “I’m suddenly starving. Want to get some curry and look through our haul?”

I ran my hand through her hair and let it linger on the back of her head. “That sounds perfect, Linney.”

###

It was called Quick Bite. She said it was her local hangout, her favorite. The windows steamed up from the pots of curry and noodles simmering in the back. There was nothing mono-cultural or authentic about the place. It was pan-Asian, serving a variety of simmered or pan-fried noodles, serving curries and gravies of all different types, thin or creamy or spicy or anything at all. The menu made no sense to me. I let Linney order everything.

We ate crispy, fried vegetables and crunchy egg noodles in a rich, coconut-turmeric broth with sour, pickled collard greens. The warmth of the dish restored me. It was the best thing I had ever eaten, and I was so happy that Linney had introduced it to me.

As we neared the bottoms of our bowls, Linney looked at me with a strange expression.

“What?” I said.

“I’m just sorting through what we exfiltrated from Restoration Consulting.”

“Some wild stuff in there.” Then, in a hushed voice, I added, “That hotel room compromat.”

She gave a minute shrug. “I was looking at the job offer.”

“Are you considering it?”

She seemed brittle all of a sudden. “Don’t judge me,” she said.

I reached for her hand, although she didn't move hers to meet mine, not right away. “I wouldn’t judge you,” I said. “If you want to take it, you can.”

She reached for my hand. “Would you take it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never been offered anything like that. I didn’t make it into college. I figured I’d go into network hardware installation because that’s the only thing in my county that pays anymore, unless you’re a street pharmacist.”

“Restoration Consulting does some pretty bad things,” she said.

“So does everyone,” I said. “So do we.”

“They take over entire countries, strip them of resources, and leave the citizens to pick through the ruins,” she said.

“I’ve seen the newsfeeds. That’s certainly what their critics or their competitors would say. But is that what you think?”

She lifted her bowl and tipped the rest of the broth into her mouth, then wiped her lips with a napkin. “I see the good they do, too. They stabilized the confliction zone in Europe. They repaired the hydrogen infrastructure in the dead of winter. They disarmed the militias in central Africa. They were in those areas when other Western interests weren’t.”

We looked at each other for a long while. She spoke again after some time. “I don’t know what to do, Rawls.”

“You don’t have to make a decision tonight, do you?”

“I guess not,” she said.

“So you live near here?” I said, turning around in my chair, trying to catch a glimpse of the neighborhood through the windows beaded with condensation.

“Just around the block.” She picked up the bill, held it to her wrist to pay for the meal. “Want to see my workshop?”

We walked, arm in arm, through the night. The rundown buildings at street level hosted a revolving assortment of people moving in and out. Music played from second floor apartments. People in dark clothes moved about the street, flashing pills in tiny, glassine bags at us so quickly it almost felt like it wasn’t happening at all. We reached the tall, pink vane of Linney’s skinny apartment building and, after she cleared security with her wrist and retina, we sealed ourselves into a capsule and rode up to her place.

It was a tiny, student apartment, with a small bathroom in the corner containing sink, toilet, and injection-molded shower stall. Its only window, a picture window occupying most of the far wall, looked out at the nighttime city. The thin concrete band of the Private Highway arced just in front of us. We could see the executive dreamliners sliding frictionlessly along it, tall and stately amid the sports sedans that ferried rich people to livelier parts of Carthage on Friday night.

We set down our bags and shucked our jackets, leaving them in a pile over the backpacks full of hardware. Without even thinking about it, we found ourselves next to each other on the couch. I couldn’t read her mood. I knew she had a lot on her mind, and didn’t know whether she wanted me to listen or help her relieve some physical tension.

I knew what I wanted to do. My body responded to her nearness. As I touched her shoulder, the tips of my fingers with the sub-subs installed seemed to know exactly what to do.

She lifted her face to mine, and I stroked her cheek with the non-cybernetic back of my finger.

“What else can those chromed-up fingertips of yours do?” she said with raised eyebrows.

“I was just thinking about that myself,” I said.

She began to lift her shirt, then paused and smiled. “You, too.”

I pulled my own shirt off and leaned close to her. Our lips came together as I felt the length of her body press against my own. Her fingers traced the circular edge of my net port.

“Are we jacking in together or not?”

“I’ve never done that before.”

“Ah,” she said. “A virgin. Maybe next time.”

She took hold of my hand and brought it down beneath her waistband.

###

It was late at night, all the lights were off. I sat up in Linney’s bed, naked and happy. The fingers of my dominant hand rested on their charging pad. Linney had exhausted me and my implants’ batteries, but it was a contented kind of exhaustion. At least I was content until I realized that I was alone.

Pulling on my boxer briefs, I padded across the room. At first I didn’t see her. But then I saw the console with its green telltale winking, and followed the path of the cable with my eyes, all the way to the net port in her chest. There Linney lay on her side, naked and jacked in, eyes open but seeing nothing, her nose streaming blood onto a pile of dirty laundry.

Gloss’s Encyclopedia of Ice

Name

Hardened Labyrinth

Manufacturer

7Wonders

Cost to rez

Low

Nguyen-Okafor complexity

Varies based on how advanced it is

Type

Platformer

Subtype

Advanceable

Subroutines

1: stops a run; causes contusions in a runner if advanced by and housed in Restoration Consulting, even when fully broken