Chapter 21: Switching Sides

“Take the stick out of your butt and have a drink with us,” said the CheRRy, waving her beer at Enrique, who stepped backward to avoid getting any drops of dark lager on his spotless suit, the color of fresh cream.

Enrique threw up his hands in immediate surrender to CheRRy’s opening salvo. “Cognac, please,” he said.

I saw that he’d replaced his usual chrome hands with a pair studded in zirconium. I couldn’t tell whether they were ornamental or weaponized.

I was so happy to see Enrique that I practically kicked my chair backward getting to the bar to grab him his cognac. It had been days since I’d seen him but it felt like years. I’d done so much since he had left for White Tree to smooth over the small matter of my unauthorized run on one of their smaller remotes.

As I set his glass in front of him, he looked up at me and said, “Thank you.” Then, taking a second, closer look at me, he said, “You’ve grown.”

“Taller?” I said. I’d only ever been used to relatives saying that I had grown, and that had only happened as a boy.

Enrique chuckled. “Of course not. I mean, I can tell you’ve had some work done here—” he pointed to the side of my neck, where the FLUX chip lay under my skin, “here—” he pointed to a space on my shoulder where the clipped square outline of the Vista Processor was faintly visible under my t-shirt, “and here—” he took my hands in his, his fingertips running over the chrome of the sub-subs. “And you’ve made more than one dangerous run since I saw you last. I can tell by the way you carry yourself.”

The pride I felt at his appraisal was warm and deep. If I could have lingered in that moment for hours, perhaps days, I would have. The only thing that could possibly have made it better would have been if Linney were here to witness it.

COME FIND ME flashed in my eye. With a stab of shame, I revised my mental assessment: the only thing that could make it truly worthwhile was if Freya were here to see how much I had remade myself in order to find her.

Look, I almost came to tears at that moment. My cybernetic eyes’ tear ducts activated the same way anyone else’s did. I looked around for Linney, possibly so the intensity in Enrique’s eyes wouldn’t make me lose my composure. But I didn’t see her.

I turned back to Enrique. “Thank you,” I said.

And then the moment was punctured by a riotous argument among the others at the table.

“Everyone knows that I run to learn about ice,” Gloss said. “That’s all I want to do: know everything there is to know about ice, about the defenses that are more than defenses, that are practically conscious beings, some of them. And some of them are weirder than that.”

“So once you get your PhD, you’re done running?” Sunya Xiong said.

The atmosphere in the bar became silent. Gloss raised a hand, palm up, as if to say, the decision was out of his hands. Most of us looked away, willing to allow him to believe that right now.

Not Sunya. “Nah, you make money off ice,” she said. “You won’t give that up.”

She looked directly at Gloss with a skeptical expression on her face. It was clear to me: you couldn’t trick Sunya. Then she turned her gaze to the CheRRy. “What about you?” Sunya said to her.

“I run because to hell with them.” The CheRRy drained her beer and smacked the bottom of the pint onto the table with a hollow, merciless thunk. “I want to hear Ohm’s answer.”

Ohm, dressed as he was last time in a pinstripe suit, although a different one, looking every bit like a banker at Plutus Capital, said, “I have only one motivation. To provide for my family.” He unlatched his briefcase and drew out a plush stegosaurus, which he set on the long table as if to say, here is a reminder of my young children.

“You could have stayed in your career to do that,” Sunya said gently.

“Not after what they did,” Ohm said. “Maybe someday I’ll go back to work for one of the corps. If one is worthy of my time. Until then, I will break them down and feed my children on the pieces.”

“Heavy,” the CheRRy said.

“Ohm,” I broke in. “You used to work for the corps. How have they not traced you?”

“I overwrote myself in the Root.”

An uncomfortable pause. No one said anything else about it and it felt rude to ask.

The CheRRy said, “We all know that Enrique runs for one reason: money. But what about you, Sunya?” she said.

Sunya leaned back in her chair. She’d changed the color of the highlights in her hair, now going with hot pink and green. “Why do I run? Because I can,” she said.

We all waited for her to explain further, but she didn’t. She looked at our faces, daring us to challenge her motives. But no one dared to. The atmosphere had become quiet, even solemn. Amid the smell of beer and the ambient noise of the bar, it felt like the evening was breaking up and still no sign of Linney.

Ohm leaned into me and whispered, “Sunya has talents that no one understands. She can find software deep in the recesses of the net, no one knows where, but what she pulls up from the depths is volatile. It almost always crashes and de-compiles itself, and the source can’t be recompiled, either. I’d say it’s magic but I don’t believe in magic. Some call her hexrunner.”

“How about you, kid?” the CheRRy said.

“I started running to find my friend. She may have died in a White Tree clinical trial, but I don’t know for sure.”

“Sorry for your loss,” the CheRRy said. “What are you going to do after you find out for sure?”

I could feel Enrique and Gloss paying attention, even though they weren’t looking directly at me. They didn’t want to pressure me, and I appreciated that.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’ll see how messed up I am.”

That broke the tension and everyone laughed. CheRRy said, “I like this one, Enrique. Better than your last guinea pig.”

Gloss shot her a look and Sunya raised an eyebrow.

I looked at Enrique. He held out a ziconium-studded hand. “Later,” he said. Then, as if that weren’t enough, “I promise.”

“Has anyone seen Linney tonight?” I said. “I’m worried about her.”

Gloss was watching me with a somber look on his face, as if saying, you should have told me what was going on this morning.

The rest were exchanging looks, shrugging, somewhat concerned, although not as much as Gloss and I were. I could tell that these runners looked after each other, but at a certain point, everyone was on their own. If the corps started tagging us, we were dangerous to be around. And Linney was tagged, although I’m not sure if anyone else at the table knew it.

Suddenly I felt the mood lighten, and then felt a soft hand on my shoulder. I saw the papery sleeve of a familiar rain coat, and then Linney taking a seat between me and Ohm. “Sorry I’m late,” she said to the group, “I had some errands to run.”

She kissed me on the cheek, which drew the attention of every single runner at the table, Enrique especially. His expression was intense and hard to read. I couldn’t tell whether it was pride, anger, or fear that I saw on his face.

“Can we get you something?” the CheRRy said to Linney. “I’m buying.”

Linney kept her hands in her lap and didn’t lean toward the table. “I’m not staying long,” she said. “I only came to say goodbye.”

Now everyone was quiet, even the CheRRy. No one knew what to say. I felt sick.

“I’ve taken a job offer with Restoration Consulting.”

“7Wonders.” The CheRRy rested her chin in her hand. It wasn’t a question.

Linney looked down at her hands. “I start tomorrow.”

“Are you tagged?” The CheRRy reached her hand down to her hip, where some kind of device was clipped into her bullet belt. But I couldn’t see what it was.

“I was. I shook the tag, though. No one knows where I am.”

“Are you sure it’s not a trap?” Ohm said gently.

Linney nodded. “Rawls and I checked it out yesterday.”

The CheRRy stood. “Well dang, kid! This is something to celebrate!”

Linney looked like she was in pain. “But I’m joining the other side.”

“You’re getting out of the margins and into a life that you can live,” Sunya said. She reached out a hand and Linney took it. “We’re proud of you.”

Ohm put an arm around the back of Linney’s chair. “We’ve been worried about you. All of us, excepting young Rawls, made the decision to do what we do when we were already grown up. You never had that choice.”

“We’re happy for you, squirt,” the CheRRy said. “Now you don’t have to worry about getting your brain fried by a slab of gray ice.”

“Thanks,” Linney said. “I don’t want this to be the last time I see you.”

“About that,” Ohm said, “you’ll be in network security, I imagine.” Everyone was looking at him. After all, he was the one who had the most experience working inside the corps, except for a years-long con that Enrique pulled once.

Linney nodded.

“They’re going to wire you up, see what you see, hear what you hear. I’m sorry, Linney, but we won’t be able to see you anymore.”

Linney had crossed her arms tightly over her chest. “I understand.”

“No,” Ohm said. “I don’t think you do.”

“Oh,” Linney said.

“You’ll be fine,” the CheRRy said. “You’ll make some new friends and pretty soon you’ll forget all about us burnouts.”

“I don’t want to,” Linney said.

“Better change that attitude,” Ohm said. “Start now. Tell yourself you want to forget. It’s the only way to be safe.”

Linney shrugged, and stood. “I had better go. I cleaned out my apartment today so I could move to Southport tomorrow.”

“Well, if they have you designing ice, make sure to put in a backdoor for me, OK?” the CheRRy said. Her tone, previously elated, had dropped into a deadly monotone. Sunya gave her a sharp look. The rest of the crew were gazing at Linney warmly.

She gave a shy wave and turned to go. I stood and moved to her side. “Can I walk you out?”

She nodded and hooked her arm in mine. We walked up the stairs. On the street, she said, “I never told you thanks for getting me out of there.”

“Of course,” I said.

“I mean it. What I did was dangerous. You saved me.”

“You’d have done the same.”

She raised a hand and stroked my cheek. “Yes. I would have.” Then, as she looked into my eyes, she said, “Jasper Rawls, I still would. If you’re ever in trouble, serious trouble, you can contact me.”

Without thinking, I pulled her tight. My nose was in her hair, which smelled of tea and oranges. “I can’t do that. You’ll be living your life.”

“I mean it,” she said. I could feel one of her tears hit the collar of my t-shirt. I squeezed her tighter. She separated herself from my embrace after a while. I wiped a tear from her cheek.

“I’ll miss you,” I said.

“Me too.”

Out there on the warm street, the mist ticking against my face, I saw the crowds of people leaving work rushing for the metro, the second-shifters trudging in the other direction, a ponytailed freerunner three stories up listening to music on neon headphones clamped over her ears. I wanted to slow time down, to keep Linney here a while longer. I wanted this to be about us.

“I thought you and me were at the beginning of something,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“But I guess that’s over.”

“You heard what they said. You could still go legal.”

It was true. I could. But at that moment, with what I planned to do to find Freya, I couldn’t imagine living a legitimate life. Maybe I felt reckless just then. Or rebellious. I wanted Enrique to be proud of me. I used to want Linney to be proud of me, too.

“Maybe I could,” I said. It felt lame. But I couldn’t reassure her and I couldn’t express certainty in the other direction. The truth was that I didn’t know what was going to happen. I felt like I was fated to run servers, but anything could happen.

She leaned in and kissed me on the mouth. “Take care of yourself,” she said. “Look me up if you can. Or if you need to.”

I held her, and kissed her once on the neck. “I will.”

She walked off toward the metro. As the rain picked up, she pulled the hood of her paper raincoat up.

On my way up the stairs, I noticed the COME SEE ME glowing again. For so long today I had been able to ignore it, so much so that I wondered whether or not it was really there. Back inside the bar, amid the welcome smell of sanitizer and beer, I couldn’t ignore it any longer.

Enrique grabbed me with his hard zircon hand and steered me away from the table. “Back to work.”

“So you said.” We found a cabaret two-top apart from the rest of the crew. “Tell me this will help me find Freya.”

“It will.” Enrique spoke seriously now. “My contact at White Tree forgave us for your earlier indiscretion on the condition that we jam up some of FUTUR Design’s upcoming products. I told her, no problem, we have it in the works.”

“Do we?” I said.

Enrique shrugged. “We’ll come up with something. Meanwhile, I took the opportunity to do some legwork while I was spending the day in White Tree HQ.”

“They let you into their headquarters?”

“Of course. I’m a sought-after consultant.” He produced a business card. It read Henri Ascuncion: drug regulatory expert. “Henri’s resume is a mile long,” Enrique explained.

“Did you find anything out?”

“I did,” Enrique said. “But let’s talk somewhere more secure.”

At that moment, Gloss looked up at us. We all rose and said our goodbyes. While we did, I noticed that the CheRRy had become morose, sunken in her chair, her chin on the table, contemplating the still miniscus in a glass of whiskey. She’d switched from beer at some point. Empty rocks glasses were lined up in front of her.

We mounted the stairs again.

Gloss’s Encyclopedia of Ice

Name

Capillary

Manufacturer

White Tree

Cost to rez

very low when protecting corporate archives; medium anywhere else

Nguyen-Okafor complexity

4

Type

Shooter

Subtype

Red; scrambler

Subroutines

2: bleeds runner; randomizes corporate server addresses