THE SURFACE—NORTHAM
MANHATTAN/CENTRAL PARK OUTLIER REGION:
@CHAMBEROFHORRORS CRIME SCENE
Crane was down.
Rubi’s incoming contacts were racking into the six digits, showing separate counters for 3,200 urgents and 95 critical attend nows. A control panel she’d never seen before kept spawning across her visual field, demanding she deal with the rolling numbers. A speckled egg, of all things, sat atop it.
She blinked the console away, pushing everything off her display but the icon for BallotBox and the countdown to the close of voting in fifteen-forty, Greenwich midnight.
“… I took the dog harness with the radio and, um, got out,” Frankie told Gimlet, in a breathy voice. “And, well, you see that rolling elevator?”
“Cherry picker,” her parent corrected, glancing daggers at the machine that had, minutes before, been an augmented castle tower.
Gimlet was serving as thingbot for a remote doctor, trauma specialist flown in on high-powered camera to examine the stab wound in Rubi’s side. A grab-and-go drone had brought out a first aid kit from the veterinary hospital in Manhattan.
Following instructions, Gimlet had already sprayed disinfectant wash into Rubi’s wound, stinging fire that apparently had to precede a topical anesthetic. Now, at last, she was numbing up. Gimlet washed the blood off their hands with a third spray as the pain abated.
“Cherry picker,” Frankie said. “I climbed into the basket and. Um. Someone drove it here.”
“You probably saved yourself and my dad both,” Rubi said to the girl.
The identical parent and child glowers eased, minutely.
“Mind your sunstroke,” the camera’s remote doctor put in. Apparently, if she was well enough to speak, she was fit to be nagged.
“I’m fine.” Rubi popped a hydrogel laced with anti-inflammatories, then ate a bite from a printed fruit cube: banana, pineapple, and papaya. “See? Fueling. Drinking.”
How many times had Drow said something similar?
Meticulous and graceful in their movements, Gimlet applied two adhesive strips to either side of the stab wound. The parallel strips were connected by a spaghetti of laces, reminiscent of figure skates.
With the adhesive in place, they slopped on a gel that induced the laces to contract, drawing the two sides of the injury close. Rubi suppressed a moan as the torn flesh cinched into place.
“One last can.” This was a coating of coagulant foam, white as old-fashioned shaving cream, sprayed in a thin layer over the entire bandage.
“Five minutes and you can move,” the remote doctor said. “If you avoid brawling, the patch should hold until a doctor can meet you in the flesh.”
“Brawling,” Gimlet mouthed, behind its lens.
Rubi fought a giggle, draping a head-to-toe sunscreen over the bloodied remnant of her primer. “Thanks, doctor. My sidekick’s down, so I can’t stroke you right now—”
Where was Crane?
“Glad to help. Five minutes, remember?” The drone was already en route to elsewhere.
“I can’t even ask my system for a timer,” Rubi said.
“I’ll run it.” Gimlet perched next to Rubi, on her good side, linking hands and then throwing the other arm around Frankie.
It was nice to just sit, to feel human heat against her as the pain ebbed. Rubi finished the chugger and the fruit, ate the bottle, let herself breathe. Then she rose.
“Time’s not quite up.”
She was moving like an old woman. Still … “Which direction did you come from, Frankie?”
The girl led them to a maintenance shed, then through a tunnel under the street, beyond the Central Park walls and the rampart of container homes surrounding the park. They emerged to find cams swarming an old mall a block away. The drones formed a surveillance cordon around eighty people loitering outside.
One, standing off to one side and looking royally pissed, was Allure.
The others fell into two cohorts: prime-of-life adults wearing medical scrubs, and elders dressed in vintage, unprinted clothing, most with cats, dogs, ferrets, or birds.
Frankie’s jaw dropped. There must have been thirty pets, on leashes and in cages. The dogs were overexcited, straining to run, barking and growling.
Only one animal, gold of hair, keen of eye, sat calmly beside her person. When she spotted Rubi, she stood and offered up a long-tongued smile without leaving her charge’s side.
“Robin,” Frankie breathed.
And Drow.
Rubi burst into a run. Something sank long teeth into her gut, and she slowed to a hobble as her father sprang to his feet.
He was thinner. Both eyes were completely bloodshot, and the hexagonal scars at his temples were mottled and pink. It was all she saw before his bony arms were wrapped around her. The baking radiation of drone lights shone on her back as every single camera captured the moment and shared it to the farthest corners of the world.
“Another notorious episode in the Drow Whiting legend,” she murmured.
“I let you out of my sight for one goddamned minute,” her father replied.
Rubi hiccupped laughter and then burst into tears.
“Oh. Hey. Hey, kid. You’re okay, I’m okay. Everything to spec.”
Reassurance made her cry harder.
Warm fur against her leg. Robin, comforting her, too.
Rubi bent to greet the dog properly. It felt as though she’d been gone for years.
Drow handed her a scavenged pillowcase. “Wipe your face.”
She did, handing him the remnants of the first aid kit as she fought to tack a calm veneer over a thousand raging feels.
Drow rooted through it, selecting three white gels and taking them orally without comment.
“What’s all this?” Rubi indicated the milling people and animals.
“Able-bodied Chamber dwellers. Second-generation oligarchs. Kids and protégés of the hoarders. There are cocoons aplenty and a full range of crepits still inside.” Drow pointed at the people in scrubs. She saw that many of them had misshapen skulls and big surgical scars. “Plus: servants. Most of ’em are people thought to have run off to commit suicide before implantation.”
“Is that actually…”
“True? Provably. They ran off as kids and someone smuggled them here. The cute, pliable ones got adopted, and the rest … botomized slaves.”
So, the @ChamberofHorrors was every bit as bad as he had always implied. Her head whirled.
“Everyone’s under arrest,” Drow added. “Them for circumventing rationing law. All these puppies and kitties form part of the evidence chain. Oh, and Luce has accused Allure of ordering him to tamper with BallotBox.”
“You’re under arrest?”
“For broadcasting transcript out of a medical hash zone, and suspicion of harboring an emergent sapient.” He gave her a supremely unworried smile.
Rubi’s comms console rose again. The attend now! number was up to 150. She swallowed, unsure how to ask.
“Crane and Happ are in digital custody,” Drow amplified.
“Happ?” She found herself welling up again. “Happ?”
“Relax,” Drow said. “Whistle your cares away. A deeply obnoxious little birdie tells me everything’ll be okay. Crane’s already gotten up bail hearings.”
She was surprised to find that she believed him.
She turned to Frankie and Gimlet, just outside the heat of the spotlight. “We’ve been talking with the Department,” Frankie said.
“Ration-breaking old people aren’t your jurisdiction, are they?” Drow said.
“Are you kidding? Hoarding? Totally stealing the future from the young,” Frankie said. “Plus, all these servant people were kids when they got Pied-Pipered away from home.”
“Beg your martyrfucking pardon.”
Gimlet stiffened but refrained from commenting on Drow’s language. “They’ll do a population audit. Everyone who can’t prove a significant give to the Zoo will be relocated. It may take weeks to empty the Chamber, liquidate the residents’ assets, figure out how they compelled the abductees to work for them. If Rollsy—ah, that’s my husband—is truly stabilized, Franks and I may volunteer for the brief.”
“At the end of every great adventure, boys and girls,” Drow muttered, “someone buys a mountain of donkeywork.”
“Stop grousing. You won’t be pushing the paper,” Rubi told him.
“True enough.” He squeezed her arm.
“Was it?” Rubi said. “An adventure?”
“Kid! I get to spend the rest of my days saying ‘Nyah, nyah, told you so!’”
“And was the Chamber everything your @bloodhound pals promised? Orgies, blood sport, wage slavery, depravity?”
“Actual slavery. I didn’t see a lot of blood sport.”
“Or…” She licked her lips. “Sports … women?”
“Yes. I found Tala,” Drow said. “I have attained complete closure and will never again suffer from a moment of delusion or woe. I certainly won’t require psychiatric intervention again.”
“Strikes for sarcasm.”
“Pop me if you got ’em, short stuff.”
He really was okay. The urge to cry rose again. Drow had gone out on one of his mad hunts, and for once, he’d been right. He’d found That Woman and come out … unscathed?
She caught herself midway through asking Crane Set me up with a counselor of my own …
Crane. Under arrest.
“We found pets, some fantastic booze, all the Superhoomin you’d ever want to see, and a big blackmail archive. That’ll have something to do with how they evaded Global Oversight back in the day. Plus a lot of black market food,” he said. “Nothing as sexy as an orgy, despite my hopes.”
“Most of them are on life support,” Gimlet observed.
“Don’t be ageist.”
“Bacchanals play better in Sensorium, anyway,” Rubi said. “Fewer pathogens.”
“Spoken like someone who doesn’t get enough sex.”
“Boundaries, Drow.” She reddened, conscious of Gimlet beside her.
“Sorry.”
A full-bore @bloodhound raid on Manhattan. The absurdity of it made her dizzy.
No, wait … she was dizzy.
Gimlet caught her by the shoulders, guiding her to a seat on the stone steps.
“You’re not still bleeding, are you?” Frankie asked.
Gimlet and Rubi shook their heads in unison.
“Bleeding?” Drow said.
“Don’t look, Drow. I don’t want to trigger—”
He tugged the sunscreen aside, peering down at the stained remains of her primer.
“Don’t freak out. My archnemesis stabbed me a little—that’s all.”
Frankie bristled. “Gimlet’s not your—” She stopped, puzzled, as the two of them began to laugh.
Rubi looked to Drow. His fists were clenched. Disturbed by the sight of blood, as always. Then his head tilted. His red eyes were fixed, but the orientation of his head showed him tracking from her to Gimlet, seeing the connection. Sweet harmony and the beginning of something complicated. Despite all the mess within their respective packs, she and Gimlet were … embarking.
On what? Pack shuffle? A merger? Maybe just an affair?
She stretched out a hand, asking.
Gimlet leaned in close, brushing lips, a feather touch that sent a bright hum through all her bones.
We’ll figure it out, they meant.
Within the mall, a clock tolled midnight. BallotBox turned pumpkin orange and split wide, spilling blue spheres. Infographic superimposed itself on a view of the night sky. Blue globes represented votes cast in favor of staying the course: buckling down to freshen the air, continuing to rein in population growth, humanity committing to getting the job done themselves.
Fat, diapered babies, representing the opposition view, lined up in neat beds among the spheres. But the babies were outnumbered by the blue spheres, if only just, and the @Congress ofYouth bloc had voted for bootstrapping, too. Independence had carried the day.
“Still in the game,” Rubi said softly.
“In the fight,” Drow corrected. “This ain’t poker chips and imaginary dollars.”
“Playing for keeps.” Her hand folded into Gimlet’s.
As the voter results spread across the Sensorium, they triggered new incomings. Rubi’s outstanding messages appeared again, front and center, counters ticking upward.
Before she could swipe it away, they transformed into new metaphor: an old wooden desk, groaning with images of notes and greeting cards. The thousands of favors she owed were invoices, debts due, a stack of thin pages rising in a tottering column to the ceiling. An egg, speckled orange and marked with the letters BABZ, rode atop the wobbling pile, a paperweight.
The egg cracked. A ginger-colored kitten head, disguised within a superhero mask, burst through. Four paws and a tail each made their own hole in the egg, the rest of which clung to its body like a jagged tortoise shell.
Drow said, “You seeing this?”
The kitten blinked huge flame-colored eyes and then pounced, opening its mouth to take in all Rubi’s attend nows in a single gulp.
“Uh…”
With a single loud “Mew!” it gamboled to the edge of the desk, barfing out one wet scrap of fur with mouse ears.
“That is not customer-friendly,” Rubi told it.
Babz—a little yellow tag on her collar offered the name—belched up a floating shrug moji, gave its paw one long lick, and continued scampering, batting urgents off the desk and into piles: trash, read later, file me!
Rubi picked up the scrap of vomited fur by her fingernails. It showed a countdown. Estimated time to the resolution of Crane’s bail hearing. Thirty-seven minutes and counting.
“What is it?”
“A new sidekick program?” Rubi said.
“Is it taking subscribers?” Frankie asked. “We’re totally firing Headmistress. Oh! She is. Accept Kitty!”
Rubi groaned. “It’s a miracle I haven’t been arrested for harboring.”
“You’re the hero of the hour,” Drow said. “Tops of the @Worldsaver leaderboard.”
“Don’t shit me.”
“Didn’t you know?”
The kitten threw itself at a wall, embedding its claws in gray nothingness, and as it slid down the surface, it left scratches. These turned into a whiteboard of posts and newscycle, flashvote coverage, all tagged with Rubi’s name, again and again. The leaderboard, too. She and Mayor Agarwal were tied for first place.
Gimlet nudged her. “You are in the market for a new archnemesis.”
“Agarwal is not—”
“It’s a compliment. Your type will always be judged by the quality of their—”
“Shut up.”
“—enemies.”
Babz mewed, batting her a trio of balls.
Rubi looked at them.
Self-assess: Smiley face? Sad face? Frowny face?
“Smiley,” Rubi said, tossing it back to her. And in that moment, with her father intact, Gimlet in sync, and the whole Sensorium doubling down on the necessary belief that they could do it, they could rebuild the world, Rubi Whiting was just a bit startled to discover that her public utterance was, quite literally, the truth, whole and nothing but.