Alida untangled Graycie’s fingers from her hair and eased a solar lamp on just a smidge. Graycie grumbled and rolled over. She’d been whining about being left on her own. Alida had worried she was never going to zonk out. Poor Graycie. She’d have to toughen up. Alida slipped into some black pants and a hooded top.
Graycie’s eyes popped open. ‘No! Don’t go!’ She had that loopy-eyed mixture of terror and hysteria that clawed into Alida’s chest and made her do anything to calm her little bird down. Alida cuddled her.
‘I wanna come with you. Mum said you’re not supposed to leave me alone.’
She couldn’t leave her like this. Maybe if she asked Ganya really sweetly, Graycie could come with them.
Ganya would never go for it.
‘Hell. I wish you could come, but Ganya said no.’
It wouldn’t be right to take her anyway. Alida wanted to keep Graycie separate from this nasty new part of her life, just as Mum had kept Alida separate from it all. She rocked Graycie the way she used to when she was littler and motion and shushing could sort out everything. It was heaps harder now she was older. Her problems were a shitload more complicated than having empty guts or being growled at by a mutt she wanted to pat.
Graycie buried her face against Alida’s chest. Snot and tears soaked into Alida’s hooded top. ‘My friend Jenny said troll monsters steal littlies out of their beds at night. What if a troll monster comes?’
‘Come on, Gray. I’ve told you before Jenny gabs on about messed-up rubbish. Monsters aren’t real.’
Graycie wouldn’t be cheered. She wailed, increasing in pitch with every second. Maybe Alida should stay. She rolled her eyes. She couldn’t. They needed the dosh. Graycie would crack the sads even more when they had zero grub and zero medicine for all her scrapes and infections.
Alida tried the stern tone Mum had sometimes used. ‘Come on, little bird. There’s shit-all I can do. I have to go and you have to get used to it.’
Graycie cried even louder. It had never worked for Mum either. Alida wracked her brain for a way to quiet Graycie. She couldn’t take her to the creche after-hours and she had no clue where Zave was. If she didn’t split soon she’d be late, and while she wished she could hide and not do this gig at all, she had already accepted the dosh and used some of it to buy grub and a new SunSuit for Graycie.
‘What if we go and get ourselves some sweets tomorrow? Maybe even some chocolate.’
Graycie’s tears evaporated like water spilt on hot dust. ‘Chocolate?’
It all came back to Alida: bribery had worked well for Mum. ‘Yep. If I go and do this thing we’ll have enough dosh for a bit of chocolate.’ Alida tipped Graycie out of her lap. ‘I’ll only be gone for an hour or two. I have to do this so we can keep our home and have yummy things to eat. You have to be brave for me. You got it?’
Graycie pouted and nodded slightly. Alida planted a kiss on her forehead and lay her down in bed. ‘Quiet as a well-oiled android, okay?’
Graycie turned from Alida and rubbed her cheek along the chewed-up edge of her blanket. ‘What about the troll monsters?’ she whispered.
‘Even if they were real they couldn’t get in here because Mum put a special spell on our shack to keep us safe.’
Graycie narrowed her eyes like she was deciding whether to buy it or not.
‘Just think about what kinda chocolate you wanna get tomorrow. Okay?’
Graycie sighed. Alida lifted her hood and stepped out of the shack. She kept to the shadows, head down, past the dark shapes sitting around fires and lamps. It would be best if nobody knew Graycie was alone.
Alida clocked Ganya’s car as she traipsed towards the meeting point. Alida hugged herself to still her shaking.
Ganya touched her shoulder gently. ‘I know this is hectic. I’ll look after you.’
‘I’ll be okay,’ Alida lied. ‘I’m not fussed.’
‘Have you done anything like this before?’
Alida bit the inside of her cheek. ‘You know I haven’t.’ Had Ganya forgotten who she was talking to?
‘No, I mean …’ Ganya rolled her eyes. ‘Are you a virgin?’
‘Ah.’ Heat rushed up Alida’s neck. ‘No, no. I’ve had bedfriends.’ The thought of doing it with strangers felt icky, but Mum had done it. Heaps of times.
‘Good, good. I’m not sure it makes it any easier, but the clients like to know.’
‘Right.’ Alida wanted Ganya to stop gabbing about it. She felt sick. If she couldn’t even handle talking about it, how would she handle doing it? Alida changed the subject. ‘So how do we get into plastic-land?’
Androids patrolled the city wall nearby. Floodlights were angled on no-man’s-land.
‘Get in.’ Ganya tilted her head at the car.
Alida slid into the passenger seat.
‘The route changes depending on LeaderCorp security and who we can bribe. We’ve had luck with truckies in the past, but our contact’s gone dark.’ Ganya wove the car through the settlements towards the inner burbs. Startled Demis shielded their eyes from the beam of the headlights. ‘Unfortunately for us, that means we have to find a different route and this time it’s through a tunnel.’
Alida’s nerves leapt to a whole new level. LeaderCorp had done their best to plug up the remains of an old underground rail network that crisscrossed beneath plastic-land, but the tunnel trolls had reopened them for smuggling. The trolls were another level of nasty. All Demi littlies were fed the terror of tunnel trolls along with their baby mylk.
‘Freel’s smoothed the way. They won’t touch us.’ Ganya patted the handgun at her waist. ‘And I can take the scaly bastards if they try.’
Ganya drove to the Northern Edge settlements and stopped the car by a cluster of characters laughing and swigging from brew bottles around a barrel fire. Ganya hoisted a pack onto her back and tossed another to Alida.
‘What’s in here?’
‘Smokes. They’re hard to get out here, but they’re completely banned in the city.’
Ganya stepped up to one of the guys by the fire and whispered in his ear. He nodded and pointed to a dark hole in the ground. She handed him a carton of smokes from her backpack.
‘We’re clear to enter.’
Ganya switched on a torch and led Alida downstairs. At the bottom the torchlight flicked over six littlies chained together and cowering in a corner, scabs and grazes all over their arms and legs. Alida took a step towards them, not sure what she could do.
‘Not our problem.’ Ganya grabbed her wrist and dragged her forward to what must have once been a station platform. The walls were covered with graffiti, busted tiles and peeling posters.
The littlies were now hidden by shadow. That could be Graycie chained to that wall. Even if it was, Alida would still be powerless. She was low on the food chain in the Demi-Settlements. With no clout whatsoever.
Further down the platform a metal ladder led to the tracks. The only trains Alida had ever spied were rotting in an old rail yard to the east of the city. It must’ve been fun, in the old days, to hurtle along on a train through the burbs and then plunge beneath plastic-land and pop up out of the ground somewhere like a worm.
The air was cooler than up above and a slight breeze blew from somewhere ahead. The remains of thousands of pieces of garbage crunched under their feet. The darkness deepened the further they traipsed along the tracks. Ganya’s torch made a circle of light in front of them, showing nothing more than grimy concrete walls. Alida put a hand on Ganya’s shoulder and stayed close. The rasp of her own breath filled her ears. Around them dark-loving creatures scuttled and squeaked. Alida wasn’t scared of rodents or insects, and she didn’t buy into ghosts or monsters, but the roof pressed down against her. These tunnels could collapse at any time. She reckoned the feeling was like being buried alive. She concentrated on the torch beam and took deep breaths.
Ganya strode fearlessly through the dark. ‘This job tonight is a Cinderella. Did your mum tell you about the different jobs?’
‘No, she never told me.’ Plastic-faced pervs had to have themes for their sex as well?
‘Follow the client’s lead. I’ll give you a cap of passenger before you go in. Have you taken pass before?’
‘No.’ Zave had gabbed on about it, though. He said it made you feel like your body didn’t really belong to you, like you were only a passenger.
They came to a wall of rubble reaching halfway up the tunnel.
‘For crying out loud. They said this was cleared.’ Ganya put her fists on her hips and clenched her jaw. She stared at the obstruction and glanced down the way they’d come.
Alida suspected Ganya was considering marching back to the tunnel trolls and dragging them down there by their ears. Alida ran her fingertips along the rubble, daring a sharp edge to slice through her anxiety.
Ganya let out a loud sigh. ‘We’ll have to climb over. Good thing you’re doing a Cindy – the grubbier the better.’
They chucked their packs over. Ganya clamped the torch between her teeth and grunted her way over, sending miniavalanches of debris down behind her. Alida stood in complete darkness, her palm pressing into the wall. Bright light shone over the top and Alida jammed her eyes closed.
‘Sorry.’ Ganya lowered the torch. ‘Let’s move.’
Alida scraped her body over the wall and brushed grit from her palms.
‘I don’t think it’s too much further.’
Up ahead there was a lighter patch of dark.
‘There it is,’ Ganya said.
They walked on until they reached a ladder rising up towards a grate and beyond that the shine of a tall building. Ganya climbed up first and peered through the grate. ‘When I say go, move quick, before the surveillance camera swings our way.’
‘Right.’ Alida climbed halfway up the ladder, her knuckles brushing the bottom of Ganya’s boots.
‘Let’s go.’ Ganya lifted the grate, placed it quietly to the side and pulled herself up onto the street.
Alida climbed, her hands shaking and sweaty on the rungs of the ladder, and lifted her head above ground level. They were behind a big brick building, in an alley filled with waste barrels. It was the cleanest joint Alida had ever seen. Even the air smelt clean. She hoisted herself all the way out of the hole. She was in plastic-land and she may as well have been on another planet. She didn’t know any of the rules or any of the safe places or characters. She was as helpless as an orphaned littlie, with Ganya the only thing she could cling to.
‘Stick to the shadows,’ Ganya said.
They crept round the building and stopped beside a rack of folded-up cars. Ganya tapped in a code and one of the wheeled plastic shells unfolded and rolled forward. Inside reeked of some sort of cleaning solution. Ganya fiddled with the computerised dash and they glided onto the street.
The city glowed green with the bioluminescence of FoxFire trees. The streets were slick, shiny and empty of life – not like outside the wall where you couldn’t move without breathing in someone else’s stale breath.
‘Where is everyone?’ Alida asked.
‘There’s a curfew.’
Curfew? Alida would love to see someone try to enforce a curfew in the Demi-Settlements.
The car moved from what Ganya called the warehouse district and into the high-rises of the residential district. Vertical chequerboards of lit and unlit windows towered over them. Alida tilted her chin up, her mouth hanging open. She caught a glimpse of her first city dwellers, two Security Force goons, and slid down in her seat.
‘Eish! Act natural,’ Ganya said. ‘It’ll look more suspicious if you try to hide.’
‘Right, right.’ Alida sat as straight as she could. How would a Citizen sit? She tilted her nose upward a little.
The goons had a young boy, from the look of him a Demi, bailed up against a wall. One of the goons was short and stocky and her skull was a weird shape, as though someone had grabbed the front and back and yanked it outwards. When she turned towards the car her big nostrils and brow ridge gave it away. She was a Neo-Neandertal. Alida had never met one, only clocked them manning the city gates. They were a kind of race of slaves the plastic-faces had created. Most Demis regarded Neos as little more than animals who had stolen their jobs.
The Neo goon and Alida locked gaze. What would happen if they were nabbed? There was no way they’d get away with it. It wasn’t only Ganya’s sunspots and wrinkles and the standard LeaderCorp Hub–printed threads Alida wore; plastic-faces all had their skin colour-corrected to the same warm-honey shade at birth. Mum had told her it was LeaderCorp’s loopy idea to end racism between its Citizens and quickly identify outsiders. Alida’s skin was a couple of shades darker than the LeaderCorp ideal.
They turned a corner and left the goons behind.
Ganya let out a breath and gave Alida a wink. ‘Hectic. Lucky they were busy. Every now and then you come across a stickler who won’t take a bribe.’
The car stopped and they got out. Ganya rapped her knuckles on the rear door of a building and after a second an older guy with a smooth metallic blue scalp ushered them into a room filled with barrels of nano-waste and shelves of cleaning products. Three titchy robots – similar to the androids at the LeaderCorp Hubs, but much cuter and without the weaponised arms – stood against a wall. Alida couldn’t wait to tell Graycie about them. She reached out to touch one, a question ready to burst from her mouth. Then she remembered where she was and what she was about to do.
‘Howzit? Having a good night?’ Ganya asked Blue Scalp. She handed him a carton of smokes from her pack.
Blue Scalp placed the smokes on a bench behind him and whipped out an OmniScreen and something like a black pen.
Ganya held her index finger out, gabbing on at the silent guy. The pen clicked against Ganya’s finger and she wiped a bead of blood onto the OmniScreen. Some sort of disease-screening program. What if Alida had the virus that killed Mum lurking inside her, waiting to kill her too? Alida held onto her belly, willing herself not to throw up all over the floor. Blue Scalp sniffed.
‘She’s nervous. First time,’ Ganya said, then continued her story about a disgraced tube star who’d been spotted in the Demi-Settlements.
The OmniScreen flashed green and Blue Scalp cleaned Ganya’s blood off with a wipe. He held the black pen out and stabbed Alida’s finger. She wiped her blood on the test panel.
Ganya was still chatting, undeterred by the lack of response from Blue Scalp or Alida. The green flash came. Bloody hell. Tears pricked Alida’s eyes. She blinked them back, unsure whether she was disappointed at not having a reason to back out or relieved she wasn’t infected.
She had to pull it together. She was doing this for Graycie. Mum had done it for years and she’d been okay. Alida was fully grown – she could handle it. With the dosh Freel had given her for this job they’d be able to buy eggs and fruit for two weeks. They could even print out some new shoes at the hub.
‘Eleventh floor. Straight to the room. I’ll be watching you on the cameras.’ It was the only thing Blue Scalp had said the whole time.
Ganya smiled at him. ‘Cheers, you’re a pal.’
He shook his head slightly and left through the door to the foyer.
‘Stuck-up prick.’ Ganya murmured. ‘You open doors for a living. Get over yourself.’
Alida allowed herself a little giggle and the tension in her gut eased for a second. If she screamed maybe she could shift it all.
Screaming would be a bad idea.
Ganya put a tiny green capsule into Alida’s palm. ‘Put this between your gum and your cheek at the back of your mouth. It’ll work instantly when you bite into it, but it only lasts an hour.’
Ganya opened the door to the stairwell and Alida followed her in. The light was glaringly bright on the polished concrete stairs. ‘These clients are a triad and they’re all very important to Freel.’
‘There’s three of them?’
‘Yes. Two women and a man. The women are both transhumanists, members of the Sapien Enhancement Movement. SEM provide illegal software to Freel and me, and we provide them with … other services. The man’s not SEM. He’s an exec for a big construction company.’
‘Great. If I wasn’t feeling nervous already …’ ‘You’ll be fine. Go along with whatever the clients want and pop your cap when you’re out of your comfort zone.
Alida’s guts churned. She’d been out of her comfort zone the second she left Graycie behind in the shack.