B-spine Read online

  She wants to ram the palm of her hand into his nose.

  “This is a Garplex tester unit brought straight from the factory. This little screen mirrors your screen. A green light here tells me you’re downlinking from federal datastores and they tell me that’s cool, since you need to receive your work schedule and suchlike. But a red light here tells me you’re uplinking data from your Slate. So to answer your question, lady, I’m standing by your bike to tell you I don’t want to see any red lights.”

  She’s white-lipped angry. “Bishop didn’t say anything about hindering my work.”

  “Hey, new plan,” he says. “What’s on your Slate stays on your Slate. don’t uplink and everything’s cool.”

  She wants to slap cupped hands hard over his ears so the trapped air bursts his ear drums. “What if I uplink, Georgy?”

  He grins and holds up his mini-Slate. “If I see a red light, you see a different side of me.”

  She turns and kneels to unlock her bike and her face burns as she feels him watching her.

  “You’ll never do it, you know,” he says.

  “What do you mean?” she fiddles with the lock so she won’t have to look at him.

  “Take me on. I see you trying to psych yourself up, but you don’t got it in you.”

  “Still don’t get you, Georgy,” she says, standing and turning to see him slouched with hands back in his pockets.

  “I mean every time you face me, you’re squaring up,” he says. “you’re doing it now – all coiled up like some meathead instructor who’s never had a street fight taught you. What classes you go to, Officer? Tae Kwon Do? Krav Maga? Kung fu?”

  “Kickboxing,” she says, suddenly feeling stupid and small.

  “Kickboxing,” he nods. “All’s I’m saying is you don’t got it in you. See, I’m not big on staying in shape…”

  “So I see.”

  “But don’t ever dare underestimate me. Violence isn’t taught in evening classes, lady. Violence is a state of mind…”

  A quarter to nine, she’s citing a couple of thrilltat users for livedrive misuse. Their block janitor called them in after he found an empty power tool casing in the trash and Kirsty has to knock for minutes until they turn off the music and shuffle to their door.

  They’re a couple, barely out of High School, newly married and already in far worse of a state than Georgy. They’re skinny thin, their hair dyed black and blue to match the thrilltats that cover their jutting shoulder blades and bony backs. Instead of wedding rings, they’ve gone for matching Celtic cross thrilltats – fourteen ounces of implanted tissue each that single them out as heavy users.

  They live in a one-room, residential unit covered in scagband posters – Cry Lisa Lisa and Pharm Kullective. They’re meek and answer all her questions in low murmurs and clearly already feel the lack of music as a void in their empty world. Without the music, the thrilltats don’t produce the mesodorphines their nervous systems crave. Without music, they’re already twitchy.

  Kirsty finds the stolen power tool wetware straight away. It’s a retroevolved Belgian hare, its fetal face bashing into furniture because, since it’s just wetware, it was born blind. They’ve dyed the fur black and blue and admit they stole the power tool to use as a scagbandy sort of pet.

  Kirsty tells them PD will come over to ankle tag them for mandatory civic duty, doing something that’s useful like humping boxes at a recycle facility or drain clearance rather than wasting everyone’s time in jail. She tells them PD will snuff their pseudo pet but already they’ve started to give their stereo loving looks.

  The block janitor’s hovering by their front door as she leaves. “Crazy fucking kids, huh?” he says.

  “Anyone willing to splice monkey fetus into their nervous system must be pretty half-baked,” she says as the music starts pounding and the neighbors start banging their own protestation on the surrounding walls.

  She walks across a brown and yellow lawn to where her cycle’s locked into a metal loop under a single leafless tree. Georgy’s not there but his cheap leather coat is, the collar hooked over the seat, its scuffed bottom collecting frozen dirt. She’s lifting it off when she hears him behind her but it’s too late. He grabs a handful of her hair and yanks one wrist behind her back as he pushes her over the bike’s crossbar so far she has to twist her head to stop her face smashing into a pedal. He kicks her feet apart so the only thing stopping her landing on her head is her free hand on the frozen ground and his crotch grinding against her ass. She’s never felt so defenseless.

  “Surprised?” he shouts, miscalculating the power of his own voice over the music blasting through his headphones. “Feeling dumb that the kung fu shit never paid off?”

  Bent over, her head filling with blood, her eyes with tears, she tries to look round but he twists her hair and keeps her looking away. “What the fuck, Georgy? You think this is necessary?”

  He barks a laugh. “Necessary? Course it is. I seen you all day. You think you’re better than me. You think you’re gonna ditch me as and when.” He pushes her head down some more so she’s got to scrabble her feet around to keep balance. “What’s necessary is I dispel you of that notion.”

  “So I get it,” she sniffs. “You lead, I follow. Now let me go, Georgy.”

  “One thing first,” he shouts. “M4 want a face-to-face tomorrow. The first call of your next shift, give your name at the pharm facility reception on Keaton.”

  “This is supposed to end this shift,” she grunts.

  “I hear they hit problems,” he shouts. “And don’t sound pissy with me, missy. I’m just the messenger.”

  “I’m pissy…” she says, “…that I’m bent over this fucking bike.”

  “Oops, sorry,” he says, reaching down and hoisting both her ankles high as he can so Kirsty’s world flips three-sixty. She tumbles over the bike, landing heavy and seeing stars and hearing Georgy’s mocking laugh. “Bet you never learned that at kickboxing class, huh?” he giggles and by the time she’s finished rolling and looks around dazed, he’s already grabbed his coat and gone.

  Nine forty in the morning, her shift’s over and she’s nearly back home, bruised and pale and red-eyed from sobbing to herself after Georgy had gone. Every other day, the sight of Shelburne old town cheers her up instantly. This handful of blocks pre-dates the Hub and survived simply by being a mixed residential and commercial area in the right spot on a map. This one time, the most streamlined solution had been to integrate Shelburne – the central few blocks at least – into District 45 rather than tear it down then rebuild it.

  So far as Kirsty knows, it’s a unique glitch in the grid and the brownstone apartment building that’s always been her home has always filled her with joy every time she’s seen it. Today though, as she locks her bike to a sidewalk loop, Shelburne is just some more cold streets. The only comfort she gets is seeing Tim through the lobby’s glass and his open apartment door, perched on his beat-up couch.

  Tim’s early twenties and a genius, although only Kirsty knows that. She hired him straight out of college to work genome recoding for her big plan and he’d ended up as her janitor and minority stake-holder too. This college kid working as a plumber had been a local joke until the night a resident’s ex-boyfriend had pulled a handgun to force his way in, and Tim hadn’t hesitate to blow him out of his microbranded sneakers with a twelve gauge. Now he’s known as the geek who killed a guy, which works for him.

  Same as always, he’s watching both the entrance hall and his cable access. Same as always, he’s got his shotgun on his lap and is shoveling cereal from a chipped glaze bowl. He calls the pump action Grandmaster Flash because it’ll send you spinning on your back – a last-century music reference Kirsty’s never even tried to understand. He calls the bowl Mom for its ability to sustain and nurture him.

  Tim rises to greet her as she walks into the lobby and before she knows she’s going to, she hugs him hard. He freezes, then awkwardly pats her shoulder while she buries he
r face into his checked flannel shirt long enough to know she’s not going to start crying. Only then does she let go.

  “Jesus, Kirsty,” he frowns, holding her by both shoulders and looking at her streaked mascara, a tear in her jacket, the mud smears on her gloves and knees. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “I fucked up, Tim,” she says, as flat and emotionless as she can. “I broke procedure and if I don’t sort it out in the next twenty four hours, the least I’m looking at is dismissal from Federal Environmental. You want to find a new employer or are you going to help me out some?”

  “Like you’ve even got to ask that,” he says. Tim might look young and goofy but she knows he’s good in a crisis.

  “Brilliant. So first thing, I need to shower, possibly puke and definitely rest up. So one – only let residents in until I wake up, okay?” Tim nods. “Two, the streets were crawling with PD last night, only they were freelancing.”

  “Off-the-book cops mean Meat4 Power, right?”

  She shrugs, not wanting to lead him one way or the other. “Does it? See what you can find out. Something big went down last night but so far, it hasn’t registered a blip on cable access or official channels.”

  “You’re not giving me any clues on this?”

  She shakes her head. “I know what I saw but I need to know if anyone saw the same thing. If anyone else saw it or shot visuals, that’s going to help me. Anything underground always ends up on the internet, right? And one last thing. I need a face to face with the Reverend and I need it today.”

  Tim puffs his cheeks up, runs fingers through his unkempt hair, blows out all his air. “Gang leaders tend to keep clear of Feds, Kirsty. How do you see me swinging this one?”

  She forces a strained, weary smile. “You’re the geek who killed a guy,” she says, “all the little bangers love you for that. If that isn’t enough, tell the Reverend I’ll guarantee him immunity for anything I see at the meet. Just get me ten minutes with him.”

  Tim looks doubtful but nods anyway. “Okay, so now I’m completely freaking out,” he says.

  “Don’t,” she says. “This is my mistake but if I keep it contained, I can straighten it out. Just cover the front door with Grandmaster Flash and by tomorrow, all this will have gone away.”

  “You mean your tomorrow or my tomorrow?” he says. “I mean, you’ve just worked a night shift so after you’ve slept, it’ll still technically still be today, only this evening. Do you count that as tomorrow or do you go by the clock and…”

  She wearily points at the lobby double doors. “Just point the shotgun that way, Tim. Keep the world out until I wake up…”

  Tuesday 11 March

  06:02 pm

  KIRSTY WAKES TO Tim banging a cup of coffee down and, for a few waking moments, everything feels fuzzy and safe and normal. Then her last shift catches up on her and her stomach flips and the warmth of her duvet is cold comfort.

  She sits up and looks down her apartment to where Tim is sitting in the flickering light of her wall screen. He’s there so often, her other friends assume the pair are living together and Kirsty’s forced to protest that she’s not desperate enough to fuck the hired help. He’s hunched over plumbing and motor parts spread across her bubble-glass coffee table, a battered stereo that’s more duct tape than plastic playing that old music he likes so low it’s just muffled bass beats. He’s running low-res internet garbage on her wall screen that she traces back through an ugly jumble of crocodile clips and wires to his battered last century laptop on the floor. For Tim, this is the biggest perk of living in Shelburne old town – access points to the full internet rather than the closed loop of the Denver cable access.

  “How come you’re always awake and messing up my apartment?” she asks him.

  “I’m everlasting,” he nods without looking up. “I get by without sleep thanks to my X-ray engraving rhyme displays. Eric B and Rakim said so.”

  “You sure about that?” says Kirsty, “because that doesn’t even scan properly, let alone rhyme.”

  “I’m paraphrasing,” he smiles, fumbling for a screwdriver. “Never really paid much attention to the lyrics.”

  “Again, amazing,” she says. “The only rap fan who doesn’t listen to the words. And what are you fiddling with anyway? The fish pumps?”

  “Just the filters,” he says.

  “Are the fish okay?” She hopes they are – each of her bioengineered trout has cost ten grand to genome code yet none have bred yet.

  “Fish are fine and healthy,” says Tim, “but the filter system’s still clogging. So I’m installing pharm-surplus filters I bought at the Night Market to see if I can up the through-flow.” He finishes screwing the assembly together and looks over. “You ready for an update now?”

  She takes a sip of her coffee then holds it up. “Thanks to this I am. What did you find out?”

  He bounds over and lands on her bed. “Okay, you said no one gets in and no one got in. You said to call the Grifters for a meet with the Reverend and I did – eleven PM tonight. Happy so far?”

  “You’re my hero,” she smiles. “What’s on the screen?”

  “What’s on the screen is three for three,” he beams. “I was worried when you said you wanted to know why Meat4 Power were buying up cops last night but it was easy. The internet’s buzzing with chatter. Have a look-see…”

  She gets out of bed fast enough to spill coffee and quickly pads barefoot over to her couch. She’s hoping that the Arclights story has broken, that someone too mad or too distraught to be paid off has posted visuals of the burning wetware so Meat4 Power can’t hold her to anything. But instead of a shattered nightclub, Tim shows her skydivers.

  She watches the visuals for a moment, confused. People tumbling off a pre-Hub skyscraper at night. Silk flaring brightly against the mirrored glass as they play their dangerous game of chicken to see who will open last. “Tim…?” she says as they start to land, “…what’s this?”

  “This is what you meant, right? This happened downtown at the start of your shift but this kid here, the one who won, he’s District 45. PD have been swarming all day looking for him.”

  The clip ends and the action replay from the top of the skyscraper on a helmet-cam this time. Tim stares in admiration. “Seems like Meat4 Power are pissed because they own the building as a comms relay point and the BASEracers thought it’d be funny to point all their dishes the wrong way. That’s kinda stupid but still, you’ve got to admire anyone who can dream up a hundred and twenty mile an hour sport in this day and age.”

  “Great…” she says flatly, “…but BASEracing isn’t what I’m after.”

  Tim looks crestfallen. “It isn’t?”

  “No Tim, it isn’t.”

  “So tell me what to look for and I’ll find it.”

  “I can’t” she says. “Until I know how much trouble I’m in, you’re better off knowing nothing.”

  He pouts. “Yet you’re going to tell the Reverend about it…”

  “No I’m not,” she says. “I need to work a security angle and the Reverend can help me with that.”

  “Whatever…” shrugs Tim but she can see his feelings are hurt. “Your meet is at the bonded freezer store past the Thurber Street residential co-op. He said to go only if you’re serious about the prosecution immunity thing. He was very clear on that point…”

  Eleven PM exactly, Kirsty’s standing with her back to the dim glow of the Thurber Street residential co-op. It’s an area exclusively for pharm maintenance workers and their families who, right now, are using their Tramtrax time slot to change shift. A cold wind brings the sounds of meals cooking, coming home and leaving for work.

  Ahead is the bonded refrigerated warehouse, a single story outline belittling the cavernous space within. Perishable products designated for off-Hub delivery – specialist cultured transplant organs or cryostored livedrives – are locked-down here before transport. Thirty degrees all year and dug deep enough into the ground to insulat
e it fully, the heat-exchange pumps that keep it freezing also heat Thurber Street homes. The combination’s a classic Hub design – the simple, straightforward and streamlined solution to fuel-efficient climate control.

  She walks up to the gate and the guards – Urban Pacification Force – don’t stop her and question her like they’re supposed to. Instead, they hand her a quilted overall zippered from left shoulder to right knee and point her to where the concrete loading ramp drops below ground level.

  The bonded warehouse takes up only half the available space, rows of polystyrene boxes on pallets being moved by livedrive forklifts shrouded in clouds of their own hot breath. She keeps on walking to the back, towards a wall of steel-walled freight containers stacked six high. Since America does minimal road miles these days, these boxes get recycled for other uses, same as everything else.

  Down in this freezing hangar, ones with peeling paint spelling out ‘Trans-American’ and ‘P&O’ shield the back half of the warehouse from prying eyes. One bearing the lettering ‘Maarsk’ turns out to be a guard post for three fresh-faced Grifters in rabbit fur hats, Ho-T Mann microbranded sneakers and bigmag scatterguns. They keep her there, shuffling and stamping and trying to blow breath rings until, through the heavy plastic strips covering the entrance, the Reverend makes his entrance. He’s as tall and annoyingly handsome as she remembers. He’s got tailored thermal overalls that make everyone else look like shit and make Pooky, his three hundred fifty pound bodyguard, look like a toddler with an Uzi.

  “Officer Kirsty Powell…” He flashes a politician’s smile and extends a gloved hand. He’s known her since she was the hottest sixteen-year-old daughter of the meanest bitch on his block and been sweet on her ever since. He stepped up to running the Grifters the year her parents moved to the Claves and she stepped up to running their residential block.

  “Warren Oakley…” she nods, keeping her gloveless hands shoved deep into the coverall’s pockets. She’s known him since he was an eight year old junior-G hustling her mom for scams. She’s seen him transform one of the District’s more lackluster gang franchises into a force that rivals Urban Pacification Forces in terms of firepower and peace-keeping abilities.