The Heist of Hollow London, page 15
“Is it wise to get into a drinking session the night before the operation?” said Arlo.
Drienne looked at him askance. “I’m not proposing a session, we just need to toast the plan.”
“Do we?”
“I think we should,” said Nadi.
“Just have some redjuice if you don’t want alcohol,” said Drienne.
“No, I’ll have one drink,” said Arlo as he headed for the galley kitchen.
Kline could tell Arlo was anxious, and maybe that was mostly about carrying out the operation, but part of it had to be Drienne. For all Arlo had claimed she’d be fine, that “episode” of Drienne’s had rattled him. Drienne had reverted to the gregarious, irreverent person he’d met in Vancouver, with no trace of the angry, paranoid voice he’d heard shouting at Arlo. Which, in a way, made Kline even more concerned.
Arlo returned with glasses, ice, and redjuice. Drienne poured a generous measure of vodka into each one, and topped it up with the redjuice. They took the glasses in their hands and Drienne looked around the group. “So. Uh … To wealth and freedom?”
They brought their glasses together and echoed the sentiment. Then the conversation turned to what they’d do with their shares of the money. Arlo and Drienne wanted to open a bar somewhere on the coast, maybe Santiago or somewhere like that, and for once this didn’t seem to be a Drienne plan that Arlo had been dragged along with, but a mutual dream. They described their bar in detail: the location, the décor, the music, the vibe, the selection of drinks, the light bites they were planning to offer, the opening hours. They had created this place in their minds over their years together, and could talk about it like they’d been there.
Loren wasn’t sure where they wanted to go, but they wanted to design and produce wearables and so a fashion capital like Warsaw would suit them well. They also revealed that on the flight here they had designed outfits for everyone on the team, not for any real reason, just for fun. Loren hadn’t kept any images of the other crew members on their slate, for security reasons, so they sent all the designs to everyone else’s slates so they could see what they looked like with them on. No one was quite sure what to say, which perhaps gave Loren the impression no one liked their designs—but Kline was impressed by his, a loose cream suit inspired by martial arts gear. He told Loren he would print it when the operation was all over, and he meant it.
Nadi wanted to use her share to open a tennis school in Nova Scotia. Again, this surprised everyone because no one had heard her mention the sport, but she spent a lot of her downtime playing it, apparently, and would have liked to play professionally, had she been able to make any choices for herself.
“Bet you’ve got a hell of a serve,” said Loren, and Nadi reacted modestly while making clear that yes, she did. And then the conversation moved on without ever coming around to Kline and what he intended to do with his share. This annoyed him, but it was also fine, because he didn’t want to tell them. It didn’t matter where he went, because he had a cast-iron investment plan, he could do it from anywhere, and he didn’t want them copying it.
* * *
“Is everything okay?” Arlo said to Loren when the others were discussing the current state of their debt.
“Sure,” said Loren. “Why d’you ask?”
“There’s nothing you want to air? That’s really the point of this meeting.”
Loren shrugged and said, “Well…”
But Drienne was saying she wanted to see Nadi’s big serve, and Arlo turned and agreed: he’d never played tennis, but he did watch it. So Nadi swapped her backhand from her left hand to her right and loaded up a tennis sim. She moved to a corner of the apartment by the window, where she wasn’t going to knock into any furniture or the light fitting. She loosened her shoulders, tossed an imaginary ball with one hand and smashed with the other. The serve was recorded at 218 km/h.
“Fuck,” said Arlo. “That’s massive.”
“I was just warming up,” said Nadi. This sounded arrogant, but was true. She served again and again and again, eventually logging eight attempts. The sixth was the best, clocking in at 232 km/h. Arlo wanted to try, so he loaded up the same sim and did what he’d seen Nadi do: his speed was 104 km/h.
“That was shit,” Arlo said, but Nadi assured him that was actually good, for someone who didn’t play. She gave him some pointers on how he could improve, and after a few more attempts he was serving closer to 130 km/h. The others wanted a go, and coaching from Nadi. Drienne’s incompetence caused much hilarity: Far from being embarrassed to fail in front of everyone, Drienne cheerfully played up to it. Even Kline was convinced to participate.
Drienne poured another round of drinks for everyone, ignoring Arlo’s protests, pointing out the vodka was only going to go to waste if they didn’t drink it, and Nadi found herself talking to Loren, who had designed an incredible sundress for her. Nadi had never worn any kind of dress in her entire life, and when she saw an avatar of herself wearing it, she felt tearful for reasons she didn’t understand.
“It’s a shame we’ll all have to go our separate ways after all this is over,” Nadi remarked. “I feel like we’re just getting to know each other.”
“Well,” said Loren, “we don’t have to go our separate ways. Nova Scotia sounds nice.”
20
BIRMINGHAM WOULDN’T HAVE HER
Friday.
Nadi was on the afternoon/evening shift because Kline had gone into the rota system and made sure she was. No trace of yesterday’s rain, the dry heat was back. Nadi stepped through the security arch, walked out onto the platform, and boarded the truck train. She saw Gregg was there too, and she took the seat next to him.
“Wonder where we’re going today,” she said, hoping the banality of the remark made it seem innocent. Today, once again, they would be harvesting Bloomsbury—but Nadi didn’t know exactly where. Depending on what materials were in demand, or the security situation, the spot they were directed toward might change from day to day—but there was usually gossip between the harvesters about where they were going.
“There’s a hospital that’s become a big vague hangout lately, our securits have been on it all week,” said Gregg. “They’ll want it stripped so they can redeploy the staff.”
“Makes sense.” Nadi looked at the back of her hand, pretending to be checking the weather, but in fact she was sending this information to Loren. The truck train had a relay fitted that bounced the signal back to the plant and Nadi could use this as long as she stayed within range of the truck train, but harvesting would probably take her out of range. “What do you think happened to that girl we found?”
Gregg shrugged with his face rather than his body. “Moved on.”
“Moved on where?”
“Somewhere. Somewhere not staked out by the corps.”
“You don’t think they’ll have sent her to prison?”
“What?”
“You don’t think so?”
“They’d have to build some prisons first. No one in London pays to run any prisons. The only people who could put up the money are the megas, and they don’t, and they also pay zero tax.” He leaned in to Nadi, as if the next part shouldn’t be spoken too loudly. “And then they complain when there’s crime.”
“I suppose she could move north.”
“What, to Birmingham?”
“Or somewhere.”
Gregg shook his head. “Birmingham wouldn’t have her. You can’t resettle anywhere from London unless you’ve got money. And north of Watford they will lock you up if you’re there illegally.”
“Sounds like there’s nowhere she can go.”
“No, but there’s nothing you can do about it.” He nudged her with his elbow. “Look, it’s better we found her than the securits. They beat people like her up for giggles.”
Nadi knew it would be idiotic to come back to London after the operation was done. It was the last place in the world she should go. But she’d decided last night that she had to find that girl. Maybe she could use her share of the money to hire someone to find her and get her out of wherever she was. Nadi would recognize her again; she was good with faces.
* * *
Gregg was right on the money about today’s work site: they were breaking down a hospital. As Nadi and the other harvesters disembarked from the truck train, there was a noise from the side of the building: a bunch of unhabitants had heard the trucks coming and opted to vacate the hospital, and a couple of securits accompanying the harvesters briefly gave chase. The harvesters were instructed to wait by the truck train while the securiteam made a quick sweep of the building, to see if any more were inside. The harvesters grumbled about the time they were losing. But this lull allowed Nadi to send Loren a follow-up message confirming they were working on the hospital. Then the securits declared the first two floors safe and the harvesters moved in.
The ground floor was particularly squalid—often the case in larger buildings, ground-floor windows were the first to get broken, and when the panes were gone, all kinds of crap blew in off the street—so the harvesters went up to the first floor, which had already been partly worked over but still offered plenty of untouched rooms. Nadi picked up a positive vibe from the other harvesters, an expectation of rich pickings as they all carried their empty carts up the wide stairwell. Nadi found a room filled with wheeled metal beds, which more importantly had a window that looked out onto the street, and Gregg joined her in the same room. Nadi applied her cutting tool to the beds, breaking each one into pieces small enough to fit into her cart. While doing this she glanced up regularly.
After they’d been working on this room for about twenty minutes, Nadi spotted Loren walking down the opposite side of the street, dressed in their most inconspicuous clothes (dark blue polo shirt and gray shorts) and making minimal noise. They’d walked here from Kentish Cyc, which was less than four kilometers away: they’d set off before the truck train left. Walking through one of the salvage zones in central London wasn’t illegal, but entering any of the buildings was, so they needed to be swift and discreet. Securiteam was still occupied with sweeping the upper floors of the building; they must have found something to entertain them up there.
Loren turned, looked up, and briefly caught Nadi’s eye. They smiled, then crossed the street. Nadi resisted the temptation to smile back, as she didn’t want Gregg to notice, not that he probably would. Nadi looked back down at her work, and when she glanced back a few seconds later, Loren was gone.
Nadi forced herself to focus on harvesting. On her previous shifts the materials she’d collected had been smaller and the cart had filled more slowly, but these chunks of metal bed frame took up a lot of space. Very soon she could take this cart back to the truck and get a fresh one, which would give her an opportunity to collect what Loren was leaving for her. Nadi also wanted to make her quota. It was possible, if this operation went awry, that she might need to stay in London and keep her head down until everything blew over, and if so she’d be grateful to have this job.
Nadi yanked a moldering mattress off another bed; her stomach churned as her senses informed her someone had defecated into a hole in the mattress, the smell turning the air heavy and oppressive. She told Gregg to look out, then she tossed the mattress as far as she could into the corner of the room. She applied her cutter to the bed in swift, decisive strokes. She’d worked out the optimum way of doing it: slice through the side bars first, cutting those into manageable lengths, but let the mesh in the middle hold it together. Then cut around the edges of the mesh and let the whole thing fall apart. Any pieces that were still too large for the cart you could then break up.
She was partway through this process when a message arrived from Loren—they were in close enough proximity to ping slate-to-slate—but Nadi didn’t look at her backhand straightaway. She finished filling her cart with metal, straightened up, and left the room, bringing her cart with her.
“You filled that already?” said Gregg.
“Yep,” said Nadi brightly.
She stepped into the dingy corridor. It echoed with the sounds of fittings being sliced, equipment being dismantled, and walls being gouged into. She checked the message from Loren, which contained only a dropped pin, no text. The location of the pin was almost directly underneath her.
The cart was too heavy even for Nadi to carry down the stairs, and the hospital’s elevators had been removed, being unsafe to use and beyond repair. Instead, the harvesting crews had set up temporary pulleys in the lift shafts. You could attach a cart to a pulley and lower it by using the hand crank. Nadi took the safety brake off, grabbed the cable with her hands, and used her own strength to lower the cart. She was not meant to do this, but it was quicker. When the cart hit the bottom of the shaft, she put the brake back on and slid down the cable instead of taking the stairs. She was not meant to do this either.
On the ground floor, Nadi guided her cart along the path down the center of the rubbish-strewn corridor, where faded tape in different colors had once guided visitors toward different departments. She stopped, left her cart in the corridor, and ducked into the bathroom that Loren’s pin had indicated.
The bathroom smelled vile. It had continued to be used by those who entered this building, long after the plumbing had ceased to operate. Loren could have put the thing anywhere, why here? But then Nadi realized the unpleasantness of the hiding place was exactly the point: no one was going to come in for a casual look around. This room was never, ever going to be stripped, it would be left like this until the building was flattened.
At least Loren had concealed it in the cleanest part of the bathroom, behind the door. Nadi took a deep breath of relatively fresh air from the corridor, then reentered. As the door closed behind her, the light on her helmet sensed the darkness and activated. She turned to see the Lost Weekend device in the corner, resting on a small heap of rubble that kept it just clear of the very shallow layer of reeking liquid that covered the entire floor.
Nadi picked it up and allowed her skeye to register it as salvage. The skeye didn’t know what it was for, and it didn’t need to know—it just assessed what it was made of and confirmed to Nadi it was worth taking.
The Lost Weekend looked like it was broken, because Loren had designed it to look like the kind of junk harvested by Kentish Cyc every day. It was about the size of a dinner plate, but substantially thicker. It was that pale green color that had been standard for technology three decades ago, but looked terribly dated now. Loren had installed it in what looked like the shell of the upper part of a cleaner, the part that housed the guidance system. It was cracked in several places, and through the gaps Nadi could see wires and tubes. It was heavyish, and Loren had explained most of the weight was the battery, as it needed a lot of power but the actual components were simple. They were very clever to have made something so effective with so few parts.
Nadi walked out of the bathroom. The corridor was devoid of people: no one had seen her enter or leave. She returned to her cart, moved some of the broken-up bed frame aside, and stashed the Lost Weekend in the middle of it. Then she pushed her cart out of the hospital, over to the truck train, stowed it on the rear carriage, and took an empty cart from the stack.
If normal operating protocols were observed there would be no problems—no one touched anyone else’s carts, because all the salvage in it was logged to its collector and they’d be the one to get the commission. Taking someone else’s cart was a waste of time, and could jeopardize your job. But still Nadi didn’t like letting the cart out of her sight, and wouldn’t feel comfortable until she was back at the plant with it. She checked the time: they were heading back to the plant in four hours and twenty-three minutes.
21
THE MAN WHO FAILED SIDEWAYS
The outfits Arlo and Drienne were putting on were the fruits of a delightful shopping trip back in Vancouver. Mia hadn’t given them an unlimited budget for the clothes, but it was far more money than either of them had ever had to spend on clothes before. They looked fucking great: Arlo had a vented collared blazer and a business kilt, Drienne had a formal mesh robe with a simple, stylish tunic dress underneath. It was wild how different they looked wearing quality, non-Oakseed clothes, woven not printed. Everything they’d ever been given to wear was accelerated-trend stuff, and much of it seemed sharp and exciting at the time—but that was in comparison with whatever they’d been wearing before, which always seemed passé by then. When you saw really great clothes like these, you realized there was something watered down about everything they’d worn before. They looked so bold.
Arlo and Drienne took a moment to admire each other. They stroked their fingertips across each other’s clothes—this was something they’d done for years whenever either thought the other looked particularly good. Arlo had never thought about why they did this. It was just one of the strange expressions of platonic intimacy they had.
They stepped back from each other and went though their identities and backstory one more time. What’s your name? Roland Fernandes. What do you do? I work for RookDivest, I’m a debranding specialist. We’re based out of Boston. You sound like you’re from round here. That’s right, I actually grew up in Cambridge. It’s all changed a lot, though!
The trick was to not say too much. Just because you thought of a nice detail to use in a certain situation, didn’t mean you had to shoehorn it in. There was a benefit in saying less: often, it meant the other person would tell you something. And if they thought you were unfriendly and taciturn, so what? Arlo and Drienne were hardwired to want people to like them, but today they’d have to get over that; they just needed people to believe them.
It was time to leave. But first …
“How are you feeling?” Arlo asked.
“What?” said Drienne, looking up from her case of drones.
