Firebreak Read online

  I can hear her stifling a yawn from across the gap between our bunks. Engage, I tell myself, and message her: you fall asleep?

  just a little. i was dreaming. there were some puppies but their tongues were wrong?

  i’ll get you some coffee Then I realize what time it is. actually there’s half an hour left before curfew. i’ll make us dinner while you work

  is that instead of coffee?

  I feel a corner of my mouth quirk. in addition to

  ok deal

  I leave Jessa to it and climb down to the little kitchen area. Ryan and Jackson are already in line for the microwave behind Talya, and a quick glance at the pantry shelf informs me we’re out of instant noodles.

  All right. I could use the walk anyway.

  gonna go grab food, I message Jessa. yell if you need me

  yep yep

  I speedwalk the six flights down. The hallways are more congested than usual, not only with foot traffic but with sleeping bags and yoga mats and the odd inflatable mattress shoved up against the walls. Backpacks and duffel bags and shopping bags and suitcases. Every conceivable kind of winter coat, from the smart-fabric ones that’ll get stolen within days, all the way down to the ones that are threadbare to the point of nonexistence. Sleeping bodies, injured bodies, children tearing up and down the hall with more energy than all the rest of us combined.

  I wonder what building’s been bombed out this time. Some shitty part of my brain points out that our water rations will be cut again to make room for these new hotel residents. Some possibly shittier part of my brain responds that as long as B comes through with her payment, I don’t technically have to care. But the rest of me is running calculations: either way, I just got twenty-five gallons. How much more of that can I afford to give away?

  It isn’t much, of course. Even the promise of five additional gallons a week isn’t going to remotely take the edge off this catastrophe. And it’s just going to get worse. It always does.

  I get down to the company store and gather up my coffee and noodles. There are enough people here that there’s an actual line backed up behind the scanners, which would explain why many of those sleeping areas I saw up in the hall were empty. I wait my turn, watching a couple of kids wander away from their group and stand in front of the display of SecOps action figures, loudly comparing which ones are in each kid’s collection. I see their faces fall as it seems to hit them that their collections are probably back in the wreck of whatever building they fled from to end up living in a hallway here.

  I reach over to a nearby display and grab a couple of candy bars for them, but by the time the scanner gets to me, the kids are gone.

  Anyway, Jessa is messaging me.

  meet me in the garden asap

  I check the time. you want raw noodles for dinner?

  forget the noodles just get up here

  Forget the noodles is such a distinctively un-Jessa-like thing to say that it shuts me up directly. So I walk through the scanner, shoving the instant noodle packages and candy bars in my pocket with one hand, balancing the coffees in the other. Then I shoulder through the door and power across the lobby toward the stairs.

  The garden is on the roof. From here that’s twenty flights of stairs. It’s no easy thing not spilling that coffee while I jog them. I’ve mostly succeeded by the time I push the door open and step out into the evening.

  It’s cold. Real cold. The wind is only worse up here, and the darkness doesn’t help.

  i’m here

  by the oranges, Jessa replies. warmer in here

  I head into the rows of greenhouses. Past lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, beets. Oranges are in the same greenhouse as lemons, with some blackberry bushes let loose in the understory of the trees. I lift the flap and duck in.

  It’s like walking into summer. Or at least a particularly humid spring. Jessa is sitting with her back against the wall, apparently not noticing the condensation that must be soaking through her coat.

  It doesn’t escape my notice that she’s sitting in the exact corner that’s well known to be out of sight of the security cameras, now that the blackberry brambles have run sufficiently amok to hide it. I arrange myself, careful of the thorns, eyeing Jessa warily.

  “What is this?”

  “Just wanted to get away from the noise,” she says, crooking two fingers at the coffees with so much fake casualness that her hand is shaking. “Lot of new people on our floor. Sound comes right through the walls.”

  “Yeah, I saw them on my way down to the store,” I say, handing her the coffee.

  “It’s nice up here,” Jessa goes on. “I just like it.”

  Tone and cadence and delivery, it’s the exact I just like it that I tell her when she asks about my ninety-six regulation and she doesn’t buy it for a second.

  She’s still looking straight at me when she takes her lenses out.

  Whatever she’s so worked up about, she’s not exactly giving a master class in not acting suspicious. If there was somebody watching her, I would imagine this continuous popping-out-of-lenses would only raise attention, not dissipate it.

  But B’s paranoia has clearly rubbed off on her, and Jessa can be as stubborn as a bag of rocks when she gets locked on to an idea. I know this conversation isn’t going to progress until I remove my lenses too, and the muggy greenhouse air is starting to lie uncomfortably on my skin.

  I sigh. Then I take them out.

  “Okay,” I say with exaggerated patience. “What.”

  She doesn’t say anything, just hands me a pocket screen. I don’t know where she’s even gotten it. Nobody uses them anymore. I haven’t seen one in years.

  I take it out of sleep mode. There’s 08, paused, standing in the crowd of player characters.

  I glance up at Jessa. “This is the cleaned-up version?”

  She nods jerkily. Nervous energy is pouring off her. She looks like she’s seen a ghost. Or like she’s won the lottery. It’s weirdly hard to say.

  I unpause the file.

  “Do you know a girl named Elena?” I hear me ask.

  Offscreen, Jessa’s voice: “Dude, what—”

  And 08 furrows his brow at me. “Elena?” he says. Shakes his head a little. “Sorry, can’t help you.”

  The suborbital drop crashes down, a shimmering wash of fire. But this time it’s silent. The death cries are gone too. The sound of bodies dropping. It’s only 08.

  I blink, rewind a second. I can’t have heard that right.

  Jessa’s eyes beam into me like headlights. I hit play.

  “—can’t help you,” 08 says. “Elena’s dead.”

  part two company man

  0008

  I SMASH PAUSE AND DROP THE SCREEN like it’s burned my hands.

  “We can’t jump to conclusions,” I hear myself say. “We don’t know…”

  “What don’t we know?” Jessa hisses. “B was right about 05 and this is proof. What we’re holding here is proof—”

  “Keep your voice down. What we’re holding is flimsy speculation at best. It doesn’t mean anything definitively.”

  “Then why are you telling me to keep my voice down?”

  “Because this paranoia is contagious. B gave it to you, but you’re not giving it to me. It stops here.”

  “You know, it’s no wonder you have such a thing for 22. You are exactly alike—”

  “Okay. First? Fuck off. And second…” I trail off. On my lap the screen displays nothing but the jumbled rainbow of the drop. I draw in a shaking breath, swipe the file back a few frames, press play.

  Elena?

  Sorry, can’t help you.

  Elena’s dead.

  I look back up at Jessa. “It’s weird. I’ll give you that.” I swallow. “It’s very weird.”

  “Yeah.” Jessa’s voice has deflated. “So what the hell do we do with it?” Almost instantly she lights back up. “Oh my god. We have to show this to B. But not online. In person. Immediately.”

  I nod sl
owly. Paranoia, I remind myself. Don’t jump to conclusions.

  But I’m having a really hard time finding somewhere else to jump instead.

  “Message her,” I say at length. “Just say we have footage to show her. Don’t tell her more than that. Not even if she asks. We have to meet. We have to show her something. That’s all.” I pick up the screen and hold it out to her. “And we need to keep this safe. Do you want to or should I?”

  “I got it.” Jessa pockets it. “It’s easier for me to hide. I’ve got more stuff.” She cracks a grin, which almost immediately falls away. “Should we lie low for a while? Stay off the game for a few days?”

  “If I was looking for weird behavior, I’d be more interested in the person who suddenly stops doing what they do every day,” I tell her. “I say we keep up business as usual, and meantime we try to get this out to B. Wherever you end up hiding it, we should both know where it is. In case…”

  In case what? I don’t know. The idea of someone coming after us because of this is like something out of a bad movie. But on the other hand… there’s undeniably something here. Something we found. Something that’s up to us to protect long enough to get it back to B. Then she can do what she wants with it. Anyone asks us, we’re just doing our job. Taking sponsor requests. They’re not about to disappear the however many million streamers who base their livelihoods on doing pretty much exactly that.

  My coffee has gone cold in my hand. The noodle packages crinkle in my pocket. There’s twelve minutes left before curfew.

  “Let’s get back,” I say, putting my lenses in. “I did promise I’d make dinner.”

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING I’m up early, out walking dogs again. This time it’s for Mr. Assan, who commutes to his office job in the city every morning from the room he shares in a crumbling split-level ranch near the high school here in old town. I guess the place he used to live is gone, but the place he works is still there? I’m not sure, and I’ve never bothered asking.

  I like walking his dog, though. Partly it’s the dog herself, Flora, who’s basically a ninety-pound puppy. But mostly it’s the route I get to take when I do. His house is part of a long row of houses that backs onto some kind of abandoned nature trail. I’m not sure how far it goes. According to the only map I found online that includes it, it runs south away through woods and farmland, and north through the city. I assume it pretty much vanished when New Liberty got dropped on top of it, but I never walk it that far anyway. A mile or so at most.

  The trail’s so overgrown it’s invisible in places, plants growing up through the pavement, but you can still find it if you know where to look. Even days like today, when it’s covered with snow.

  There are no footprints besides mine and Flora’s, which suits me just fine. I walk and check my messages obsessively, every few minutes, like I wouldn’t hear the ping of one arriving in all this snow-hushed silence. Jessa was already gone when I left. It’s Wednesday, so that means she’s out with Keisha collecting litter for nickel deposits out near the highway.

  I check the time. 8:47. She told me she messaged B over two hours ago.

  It’s still early, I remind myself. Not everybody has to get up in the freezing dark to walk other people’s dogs or pick up other people’s garbage.

  But we don’t hear back from B today at all. Or tomorrow. Or the day after that.

  By Saturday morning we’re both just the tiniest bit on edge. We’ve kept up appearances, streaming the game like we’ve always done, making half-assed flailings at our thousands, trying to get the up-close footage B wanted. Our lucky streak from earlier this week doesn’t continue. We catch sight of a beacon in the distance, once, and one time 17 zips past us on a hoverbike, laughing his little eternally-nine-year-old head off. That’s it. There’s no footage on the order of 28 alone in the field, or my bizarre staring contest with 22.

  And nothing remotely like what 08 said to me.

  Saturday afternoon we’re up in the garden, actually working a legitimate shift this time. It’s all volunteer-run, and nobody cares who takes shifts when, as long as everyone pays their watering dues and everyone pulls their weight, so it’s easy enough to get in there together and talk quietly while we weed the strawberry beds shoulder to shoulder.

  “She hasn’t replied to you at all?” I whisper.

  “Nothing,” Jessa whispers back. “I can’t raise her.” She pulls out a dandelion, shaking the caught soil from the roots. How did that even get in here? “And our first week’s payment was due yesterday.”

  My scalp tingles with sudden mild alarm. Not answering our messages is one thing. But not paying us for the job she dragged us all the way out to the middle of the city to hire us for?

  “Keep trying. Tell her something else. Something that gets her attention.”

  “You mean you want me to actually say what we—”

  “No. I don’t know. Not that exactly, but—”

  “I am trying. I’ve been trying. She’s not answering.” Jessa’s next weed comes out at the wrong angle, pulls up a strawberry runner with it. She tucks that back into the dirt of the bed, apologizing to it under her breath like it can hear her. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Okay. It’s been, what, three days? Almost four?” I work another minute in silence, letting the repetitive movements of my hands help get my thoughts in order.

  Almost four days of silence. When we have information she’ll definitely want to hear. I don’t know what B does for a living, so maybe she’s away for work? But her brother’s account pays our water, and that was due yesterday. Could they both be off on business or whatever? Maybe, but it seems odd after B’s extensive checking up on us before even taking us on for the job. Why go to the trouble of hiring us and then go quiet when we actually turn up something?

  Did she bring someone else in to replace us? Did someone get to her, scare her into dropping her plan altogether? Did her ancient library computer finally break down? Did she decide the Elena theory wasn’t worth the cost or the effort or the risk to pursue?

  I can’t say any of this to Jessa, of course. She’d just assume the worst.

  Round and round, swirling, nothing factual to grab hold of. It’s not going to coalesce until I force it to.

  “I say we go out there tomorrow.”

  Jessa looks up sharply. “Back to the coffee shop?”

  I nod. “Without actually talking to her, all we have is guesswork, and that gets us nowhere. We go out there and we sit her down and show her the file.”

  “And find out about our pay,” Jessa adds.

  “And find out about our pay. If she’s not there, her sister will be, or someone will know where the sister is. It’s her place. Someone has to know.”

  “All right.” Jessa gives one decisive nod. “Let’s do it.”

  “And who knows?” I say as we stand up to leave. “She might message you back any minute, save us the bus fare.”

  But I wouldn’t bet on it.

  * * *

  WE’RE HALFWAY OUT the front door the next morning with our backpacks and coffees and energy bars when Jessa freezes like she’s just walked into a field of undetonated ordnance.

  “Oh,” she breathes, “shit—”

  “What is—”

  “It’s Sunday. I have to work. I promised Tegan I’d take over for them today at their delivery job thing because they have that other thing they just started and it overlaps? They asked me a week ago, and I promised.”

  I process this a second. “Can you maybe unpromise? Cover for them next time?”

  “They left in the middle of the night, they’re not due back until this afternoon!” Jessa’s voice swoops up to this weird panicked note and stays there. “I flake out on them, they get fired. I can’t do that to them!”

  “Okay, calm down. When do you have to be at Tegan’s job?”

  A glassy-eyed pause while she checks something. “Nine thirty.”

  I check the time. It’s 7:14. Our
bus leaves at 7:30. I pull up the schedule and sigh. Buses back to old town run on the hour, which means we either somehow have to ride to the city, get to the coffee shop from the bus stop, have our dealings with B, and get back to the bus stop to ride back here by eight o’clock—or Jessa’s going to be late. And I know without even attempting to run the numbers that option one is impossible. We’ll be lucky to have cleared the checkpoint by eight.

  “I wish we had suborbital drops in real life,” Jessa moans, rubbing her temples.

  “We do,” I say absently. “Just not for civilian use…” I trail off. Shake my head to clear it. “Okay. You’re not going to make it there and back in time. You’re just not.”

  “I know!”

  “It’s fine. Give me the screen. I’ll go.”

  Both Jessa’s eyebrows shoot up. “You. By yourself.”

  I gesture: Do you see anyone else around?

  “You never do the people parts.” The idea is apparently so outrageous that it physically backs her up a step. “Not even in the game.”

  “Well, looks like I’m doing them today.” I crook two fingers for the screen. “Give. You can process the existential horror of it on your way to work. I’m going to miss my bus.”

  As it is, once she hands the screen over with a dubious look that is the opposite of supportive, I still have to run, and there’s not a chance in hell of a window seat.

  The bus takes more or less the same route the car took the other day. The checkpoint’s still there, though a second pop-up interrogation pod has joined the first, and there are more cars pulled off to the side for inspection than before. I catch a glimpse of a teenage boy on the ground between two cars, a checkpoint officer sitting on him while a woman stands over them both, screaming something too slurred with fear and fury to make out. The kid’s face is bloody, one eye already swelling shut. He looks scared. He says something, and the officer lifts the kid’s head and smashes it face-first into the pavement.

  The bus pulls up into the scanner field, and I can’t see the kid anymore, or the officer, they’ve been eclipsed by one of the pods. I should’ve been able to see the woman, though. Probably another officer tackled her, too. But even through the smart windows of the bus I can hear her screaming.