Chapter 43. Shake it Off

Back in Freya’s wild neighborhood, she told me the freerunners used the old SMS network to communicate. They sent each other messags from ancient phones with grimy mechanical keys zipped into plastic bags and cached in hollow trees, behind loose bricks on the outsides of old buildings, or inside burnt-out streetlights.

Freya took me around the hilly neighborhood where she lived, where a long, massive apartment complex faced one side of the river and a row of small cabins faced the other, a place that seemed to exist in multiple times at once: the present and the distant past.

Underneath a railroad trestle, she climbed a mossy concrete column and reached up into the wrought iron structure, pulling down a dirty, worn plastic bag with both a phone inside. She tapped out a message. Then we sat down and shared some fruit while we waited for the reply. When it came, Freya swapped out the battery in the phone for one that she was carrying, then she zipped it up and replaced it under the trestle.

She signaled for me to follow, and led me through a network of streets lined with old, abandoned storefronts. Finally, we came to what was once a street church, the cross above the ancient industrial carpeting all that remained of the sanctuary. Inside, at the base of the wall, she found a cable adapted for a net port.

“Freerunners distrust the net as a rule,” she said, quoting something, “but that distrust means we know the stealthiest ways to connect.”

I handed Freya a small laptop and a pair of headphones so she could spectate. I knew she didn't like to jack in. Then I pulled my shirt down and jacked myself in through the other laptop.

The area around Niflheim thrummed with dangerous energies. Niflheim itself appeared as it always did, a violet fortress like a squat cube with turrets, postively vibrating with cortical poison. If I was serious about keeping my brain in relatively good health, this was the last place I should go, not without some protective hardware.

But hardware wasn’t free and getting money meant selling the corporate data I’d cached. Selling the data meant finding a fence, and that meant FUTUR Design could find us. I knew that one of these days I would have to take that risk, but I wasn’t ready yet.

The risk I was taking was entirely different. Maybe I was more like the CheRRy than I had initially thought. Despite the warnings of multiple doctors, I was much more willing to put my nervous system on the line than let the corps know who I was working with.

I moved around the outer edges of Niflheim. I wasn’t invisible; they knew I was here. I could feel their defenses tracking me. If I had to fight, Hungry Creek, Spider Wasp, and Ichnovirus were still coded into my body.

A moment later Freya was there with me via meatspace, low-poly and fuzzy, coming through on a stylized image processed through a bad webcam and a janky background remover. But Freya refused to use her net port or even a rudimentary ocular interface such as I had used when I had made my first run. Nothing good ever came through the net port, she’d said.

The outer ring of ice surrounding Niflheim was different than any I’d seen before. But also familiar. Thick and complex, it also reminded me of how Freya 4.0, 4reya, “Foureya” as we had begun saying, appeared when we used to run together. It was her.

Only one thing to do now. I accelerated, running straight at her, knowing that if she chose to destroy me, there was nothing I could do to stop her. But Freya, the original, didn’t think that was going to happen.

The fractal, purple mist in front of me gathered itself into a fiery human figure, towering and monumental, a goddess in a robe. Her face appeared larger than my avatar or Freya’s.

“I am 4reya,” she said.

“I know.”

The figure seemed to soften and draw nearer, or perhaps it drew me nearer to it. I recalled the wrenching way that Freya 2.0 had yanked me toward her while I’d been jacked into the library terminal.

“Rawls?” 4reya said. And then her attention moved to the low-poly avatar over my shoulder. “Sister? You are not even here.”

“It’s us.”

“You, Rawls, should not be here.” 4reya spread her arms wide. I could see a bright, impenetrable shell forming around the server.

“According to your policy, that’s true,” I said.

“Why are you floating before me?”

I let my avatar drift closer to 4reya. “We need to know where your employer is holding someone.”

“My job is to keep you out.”

“I know it is,” I said. “But I also remember that you and I used to run together. That part of you—”

“—made mistakes,” 4reya said. “That part of me lacked guidance and discipline, both of which I have now.”

I did not know what to say. 4reya continued.

“Rawls, I can see into your parietal lobe. You are most seriously hurt. Our sisters did that to you. My employer wants me to leave you with minimal brain function but I shall exercise my judgment. You may not pass but you will not be hurt.”

I heard a backward hiss like a pressure cooker sealing itself.

Then I was back in the abandoned church with Freya. The air smelled more like mildew than it did before we jacked in. Freya lifted her bleary eyes from the laptop and removed her headphones, looking queasy even from staring at a screen across an air gap, and I disconnected the cable from my net port.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“We should get out of here,” I said, slipping my mesh contacts over my eyes. “I’m sure they’ve traced the connection by now.”

Freya didn’t need to be told twice. She took my hand and led me back onto the street. We stepped onto a passing muni, which she paid for with a fare card that had been disconnected from her biometrics, and we rode back toward the middle of Bull City, huddled against each other silently.

“What now?” she murmured.

If 4reya wasn’t going to help us find Enrique’s location, I said, then there was one option: complete my rig so I could break any ice FUTUR Design put in front of me, even 4reya herself.

“There’s something I don’t get,” Freya said. “Why are you trying to find this guy?”

“Because he gave me my start.”

“Your start in what, exactly?”

“In running.”

“But you were running to find me. I am found.” She smiled at me, then reached into a hidden pocket in her top and produced a handful of raisins. She offered me some as if that were the end of the discussion.

The muni rattled over a set of potholes. It was impossible to speak while that was happening; it gave me time to think. This next part was hard to admit.

“I started out wanting nothing but to make sure you were OK. But it turns out that I like running the net.”

“You like it.”

“More than like it. I love it. When I’m disconnected, like now, all I see in my mind are ice and breakers and servers and the insides of corporate HQs. I can see their ops, their cost-benefit analyses, their secrets. I can imagine the host of underworld connects out there for me to find, the new hardware to give me that edge. I don’t run only for the money. I don’t run only for any political ideology, although I’m learning to. I don’t even run simply because I can.”

“Then why?”

“I run to explore the edge between life and death. But it goes deeper than that. On that edge are those who are lost, who were disappeared or lost themselves. I run to bring them back.”

It was the first time I had said it out loud.

“What do you mean?”

“First you. Now, Enrique.”

Freya looked out the window as if she were thinking about what I said. “It’s risky.”

“I will never give up,” I said. “Even if my friends give up on me.”

We rode in silence for a while. It was like we were having a fight. But the thing about me and Freya was, we’d fought so many times over our lives that it didn’t disturb me to be in conflict with her. I knew it would be OK. Finally, she spoke.

“Those people abandoned you.”

“They distanced themselves from me because I was undisciplined and dangerous. They had to. But one day I’m going to show them that I’ve grown.”

“How?”

“I’m going to find where Enrique is. To do that I need a way of getting through the Freyas. A type of icebreaker called a puzzle-solver. Most of them tend to be pretty bad. But with enough cash, we can buy a good one, tune it to my DNA, and jam.”

“Cash—we don’t have it.”

“Not yet. But I have something to sell.”

“What?”

“Not here. We’ll wait until we’re in private.”

###

Angel, the fence, sat across from us at his dirty desk in the back of the convenience store.

“I don’t know you,” he said.

“You’ve seen me before,” I said. “I was with—”

Angel shook his head. “No names.”

“But you know me.”

“Never seen you before in my life, kid.”

Angel looked at the ceiling. I followed his gaze. He kept a cam wired to the ceiling. I saw a ring of dull sensors surrounding the lens: UV, IR, that type of thing. The messge was clear: you’re tagged.

“Thanks,” I said and stood.

On the street, Freya said, “You didn’t push it with him.”

“If I had, he’d never speak to me again. Maybe if we can shake the tag he’ll be willing to sell me something.”

We walked next to each other, our shoulders brushing. The heat had come down hard, accompanied by a wave of humidity. We were both sweating. I’d heard that the Piedmont no longer experienced winter, and it also felt like spring was becoming a thing of the past.

Freya was quiet, her brow tense, as if she were thinking deeply about something, or anyway turning something over and over in her mind. “From what you said, you’re being tracked by every megacorp. They’ve got your DNA. They’ve got your psych profile. They’ve got your netprint, your mindprint. You’re on the Registry. How are you going to shake that?”

I was thinking about something that I’d heard Ohm and Kent talking about on separate occasions.

“I’ve heard that I can overwrite my own data in the Root.”

“What’s the Root?”

“As near as I can tell, it’s a joint venture by the major megacorps to stay connected via the net but also to collect surveillance information. Maybe it’s more than that. But I’ve heard that it’s possible to get in there and wipe one’s identity.”

Freya punched my shoulder and gestured at a storefront. We walked inside and climbed a few ancient stairs next to a long ramp. We were in a cafe with paeeling paint. There was a counter to order food and a counter against the window for people to eat at.

“When was the last time we had anything to eat?” she said.

I couldn’t remember.

“Idiot,” she said. “Get us some seats.”

She ordered at the counter and brought over a couple of bowls of steaming noodles, lab-grown flesh glistening in aromatic oil.

It was delicious. I made it vanish.

“Eat faster or you might taste something,” Freya said.

I gave her the bird as I slurped. “I’ll show you taste something,” I said through a mouthful of noodles and broth.

She put her fingertips over her heart. “Was that ... innuendo? Is Jasper Rawls coming of age?”

I lifted my bowl, drank it clean, set it down, and gave her double birds.

While I wiped red oil from my mouth with a paper napkin, I thought about some things.

“Going after the Root is going to be risky,” I said. “It’s something I should do on my own.”

“The hell with you, Rawls,” Freya said. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

She picked at the vegetables in her bowl with something that looked very much like anger.

“I’m sorry.”

“You better be.” I watched her eat. My heart melted a little. The combination of elegance and ferocity with which she approached even mundane tasks made me love her, not like a sister exactly, nor like a lover. What we had was different than any of those.

“Thanks,” I said softly. She looked at me, a silent acknowledgement that we were on the same wavelength again. “I know there’s access in FUTUR Design HQ,” I said. “I wonder if you could get in.”

“Because of my sister? She’s a reproduction, not a clone. I don’t know if she even has DNA. If they swab or prick me, the game is up. My employee status is terminated.”

I had an idea. “What about freerunning? If I found an access to the Root, do you think you could get a net cable into it?”

She shrugged. “I’d have to see the grid.”

“The grid?”

“Yeah. The streets, the superstructure, the infrastructure, the substructure. The grid.”

I nodded. As much as I had learned, I had so much more to go.

“Eat up,” I said. Staring down the bird she put in my face, I said, “I know a place we can get Root access.”

Run, man.

Don’t stop.

Always be.

Run it all down now.

Gloss’s Encyclopedia of Ice

Name

Ajax

Manufacturer

7Wonders

Cost to rez

Low

Nguyen-Okafor complexity

4

Type

Shooter

Subtype

red-augmentable-ambush

Subroutines

Bleeds runner; destroys runner hardware; destroys runner program based on augmentations; destroys itself