Swerving, honking, and banking briefly onto an empty patch of sidewalk, Kyle manages to get us ahead of the traffic and away from the scrubbers. But then, a dozen yards ahead, our path is shuttered by a series of VC roadblocks.
I call out, “Hacker dude! We need help—”
But Kyle doesn’t wait. She lays on the horn, sending nearby workers scurrying, and blasts through the roadblocks and over those rubber “slow down!” bumps. It creates a loud, rapid thudding like the drumroll for the announcement of Ladies and gentlemen! Here come the winners of the Flying by the Seat of Their Pants award!
All I can do is stare at Kyle—the only thing actually in focus—as she begins laughing, nervously at first, and then in a holler. I can’t help joining in, laughing like our lives depend on it.
We turn a corner to follow the barbwire perimeter that surrounds the asylum and the VC high-security facility. We pull up to a large, metal boom gate and hush like everything only just got serious.
“Any advice?” Kyle asks the Suckerpunch hacker.
“Nope,” he replies.
“Well, I’m glad we didn’t do anything impulsive,” I mutter, and my heart races again as a soldier leaves a security booth to head over. “Shit. Get in a scrubber suit!” I tell Kyle, climbing into the rear of the van to grab one. Kyle joins me, our hands fumbling wildly.
The soldier knocks on the van side. “Roll down the window.”
“One second!” I call out as we each put on a scrubber helmet with an opaque black visor, then scramble back to our seats.
“Window down. Now.”
Kyle rolls down her window as I adjust my helmet and hope it’s on right. Kyle’s name tag reads CHEN R., mine FRANKLIN B.
“Good day, sir,” says Kyle, to a tall middle-aged guy in a gray VC uniform. “We need to get into the facility.”
“Your vehicle isn’t cleared to enter.”
“We’ve been on back-to-back cleaning jobs, and we need to use an incinerator ASAP,” says Kyle, looking back over her shoulder. “Who knows what the toxic goo in the back is gonna turn into. We’ll be in and out in a few minutes.”
The man’s beady eyes don’t blink. “You’re not on the list.”
Kyle wavers, so I lean over to say, “Buddy, please.”
“Don’t buddy me. It’s not my job to make yours easier.”
“Seriously?” I might as well have lingering maroon droplets on me. “Y’know what isn’t in our job description? Brimstone cleanup. We were all set to dump our biowaste at an incinerator, until we got ordered to help city cleaners handle all this brimstone. We’ve literally been on the go all day.”
He tries to speak, but I power on.
“Dude, I accidentally sucked a pinkie finger into one of my suit pouches, and it’s rattling like candy! Can you just be a damn human being for a minute and let us use your fucking incinerator?”
The man grits his jaw, and I hold my breath.
Did I go too far?
“Please . . . sir,” I add.
“Fine,” the soldier mutters, before stepping aside and waving at a colleague to raise the boom gate. “Drive into the facility’s parking garage. There’s an incinerator at the far left of the garage interior. I’ll expect you back out in five minutes.”
“Thank you!” Kyle replies, before driving us toward the garage.
“Here goes nothing,” I whisper as we enter a concrete dungeon.
A rolling door closes behind us with a thud.
A minute later, Kyle rolls the van into the farthest spot from the front gate and turns off the ignition. My pulse is hammering away in my ears. We’ve got five minutes before that soldier checks on us. Maybe less before the real Franklin and Chen report this van missing.
“Wow, you’re in,” says the Suckerpunch guy as Kyle pulls her phone out of a suit pocket. “I’ve gotta hang up so I can add the finishing touches to my remote hack for the VC computer. If you’re not captured in the next few minutes, call me back. ’Kay?”
Kyle drums her palms nervously on the dashboard. “We’ll need to get inside and find our way to the data archive. So we’ll need a distraction.” She peers at the rear of the vehicle, where walls are covered in drawers and fold-up workstations. “Maybe there’s something here.”
Kyle climbs into the back. I follow, careful to avoid the heavy black bags that surely contain human remains from the scrubbers’ earlier shifts.
We start going through drawers, and I ask, “What are we even looking for?”
“This,” says Kyle, as she crouches in front of a large box that contains a clear bag. A bag that holds a bowling ball–sized chunk of brimstone. (Which must have landed in something super soft to avoid powderizing.)
“Hot damn,” I hiss. “That giant thing oughta be in the Smithsonian.”
Kyle takes off her stained scrubber suit, then grabs two brand-new ones from a drawer. She eyes the plastic pouches attached to the suit exteriors, then says, “These pouches fill up with vacuumed blood and dirt. . . . I think they’re detachable.”
Kyle manages to unclip one. As it turns out, the pouch has a socket that connects to a nozzle on the suit.
“Let’s see . . . The scrubber’s portable vacuum backpack connects here—” Kyle points at a square hole at the back of a suit, and we peer in to see tubes that lead to each nozzle. “Okay . . . so the suit is designed to allow each pouch to fill up one at a time. But what if we use the suit in reverse?”
Kyle glances at a REVERSE button on the vacuum, then over at the brimstone chunk, and my eyes widen as I yelp, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! You want to turn a scrubber suit into an ash-spewing contraption?”
Her answer is a crooked smile.
Before I can respond, Kyle tells me to take off my scrubber suit and grab a fresh one. As I do so, she grabs a scalpel and then carefully cuts open the bag holding the brimstone.
The air suddenly reeks of cigarettes.
“Jas, take off all the pouches on both the new suits.”
Jas? Is that what she used to call me?
Focus. I pour my attention into stripping away suit pouches, and when I’m finished, I’ve created a mound of twenty bags. That’s when I notice Kyle using her scalpel to slice off tiny chunks of brimstone. We’re running out of time, but she goes slowly. Careful not to create enough kinetic energy to, well, blow up the super carbon before we can use it.
Once she’s cut twenty pieces, Kyle and I carefully place one gray chunk in each pouch.
“Okay . . . that was the easy part,” she whispers, before donning her new suit.
I do the same.
With a deep breath, we slowly clip our filled pouches onto the front and sides of our suits, then stick on our new helmets, followed by scrubber vacuum backpacks. Kyle and I take in a deep breath, waddle to the van’s rear doors, and then exit with as little sharp movement as possible.
“Are we actually about to invade a VC building?” I whisper.
Kyle wavers but nods. “Sure. Why not? I mean, what’ve we really got to lose?”
We head to a nearby steel door that seems to lead into the building. I press a button next to it, but nothing happens. Shit . . . We need a key card.
Nearby, soldiers bustle around at another vehicle. One of them has a sharply pressed uniform studded with stripes and little badges. My heart skids when I realize it’s Lieutenant Davey Shiner.
He’ll notice us eventually. How could he not? In our scrubber suits, white against the gray-black walls, we look like fucking astronauts. I’m guessing this isn’t the natural habitat of scrubbers.
Kyle gestures for me to face her. “We need to wait here for someone to trigger the door, so pretend we’re talking. Try to act normal and not draw even more attention.”
I want to say, Okay, but I’m too freaked about what could happen if we’re caught.
“Just . . . act natural,” Kyle whispers.
“Act natural? And do what—chitchat?” I hiss.
That makes me think of the one thing I want to talk about: That memory from the pool. That suggestion that we were more than friends. I know we’re thinking of the same thing.
Kyle moves closer and says, “Jasper, about the past . . . I promise I’ll tell you everything later. Swear to God. But right now I need you to tell me something.” She whispers even softer now: “I need you to tell me we’re not gonna screw this up and end up dead or in a prison cell. Okay? Tell me we can do this.”
I wish I could see her eyes through her visor.
“Can we do this?” I whisper. “Honestly? I dunno.” My words falter, until I realize we’re holding hands and making shapes that aren’t shadows or mystery silhouettes from a photo. We’re real. “Kyle . . . I’m not scared. Because even if this is the last thing we ever do, at least we’re doing it together.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I got you.” I keep holding her hands but sway from side to side. I tap my feet softly to the HVAC droning. “Ready to keep dancing in the chaos? And fighting?”
“Dancing and fighting? Like, capoeira?” she asks.
And when I laugh, she adds, “Hell yeah.”
We let go of each other and try to look casual.
Shiner and his men head toward us, and I feel the weight of their stares.
“Apparently, there’s a gene that determines the sort of earwax you produce,” I tell Kyle, trying to make my voice sound unrecognizable and scratchy. “Did ya know there are two types of earwax? Dry and wet. How fascinating is that, Chen?”
Shiner flinches when he overhears my words, but he chooses to ignore us and unlock the door with his key card. He and his men enter, and we follow, casually, a few steps behind them.
Shiner and the soldiers enter an elevator hidden in a side wall, and I exhale in relief when the door closes and dings. Kyle whispers, “To use what we’ve made, grab your vacuum handle and press REVERSE on and off. That’ll create a super-short burst of brimstone. Got it?”
“Got it,” I whisper back.
We enter a foyer. Cold lights. High ceiling. Scientists in white lab coats. Steel doors along concrete side walls. Kyle walks to a wall-mounted plaque that has a building schematic, studies it, and then faces the center of the room. “On the count of three, shoot a pellet at the wall air vent to your left. I’ll do the middle of the room. One . . .”
A distant receptionist gives us a pinched stare and says in a shrill voice. “Eck-scuse me! There are rules against scrubbers entering high-sec facilities!” People start to look our way. “There are biohazard rules about—”
“We didn’t ask for your rules!” Kyle yells as we whip out our vacuum handles.
We click our REVERSE buttons on and off and each blast out a chunk of brimstone. Mine lands on the left wall, roughly around the vent, and powderizes with a creepy aahh. Kyle’s piece hits the ceiling. In an instant, everything becomes a gray murk, and all I can see are blurry silhouettes as soldiers and scientists stagger around, choking.
This ain’t no capoeira. It’s chaos.
Someone bumps into my arm, and I stumble backward, losing my bearings. “Ky . . . uh, Chen!” I call out.
“Franklin!” Kyle yells back. “This way!”
We Marco Polo our way to each other in a corner. Kyle grabs my hand just as Klaxons go off. “The ash has triggered the fire alarms!”
But instead of releasing water, metal spouts on the ceiling are gushing plumes of white gas. Were this a fire, the gas would’ve swiftly extinguished any flames, but here, now, all it does is churn the brimstone.
“Damn. Wasn’t expecting that!” I shout. “Is this safe for people here?”
“I don’t think it’s enough to do serious damage to anyone,” she replies. “But we don’t exactly have time to check WebMD! We need to move!”
Kyle leads me to the left wall and feels around for a door. She tries the handle. Locked. But instead of freaking, she waits for a moment, and click, the fire safety system automatically unlocks all the doors.
We dart through the doorway, and the corridor beyond fills up with gray dust. I can barely see a dozen steps ahead of me, but I hold on to Kyle’s hand as she leads the way.
I need to wipe my helmet panel every few seconds to clear my vision.
We get to a stairwell, and Kyle and I shoot pellets to clear the space ahead of us. Within moments, scientists and soldiers stagger out like animals smoked out from a hole. When we’re reasonably sure everyone who’s getting out has gotten out, we make our way down the stairs.
Sublevel 1 . . .
Sublevel 2 . . .
We get out at sublevel three and Kyle mutters, “This is it. The data archive level,” before raising her vacuum spout. She’s about to create a smokescreen.
But I hold her back. “No! We’ll damage the computers!” I whisper, and she nods as we holster our vacuums. Only then do we gaze ahead at a corridor lined with identical steel doors.
Soldiers spot us and dart over, ready to tell us to halt. But Kyle doesn’t hesitate as she shrieks out, “Ohmigod, ohmigod! Help! A demon chased us into the building! It’s upstairs coughing up brimstone! Hurry!”
The guards race into the stairwell.
Once they’re gone, we hurry down the corridor and find a door marked Science Research Archive.
We head inside, and Kyle removes the black visor part of her helmet, revealing a clear screen behind it. I do the same, and we both slump to the ground with a huge, shared sigh. Her eyes are saucer-wide, but she pulls herself together to text Suckerpunch:
We’re in.