Firebreak Read online

  “Breathe,” I tell her. “What, you run a marathon before coming here?”

  “I was up on the roof,” she gasps. “In the greenhouses. My turn to grab the room’s produce ration. Here.” She tosses me something, and I catch it. It’s a quarter of a lemon, wrapped in plastic. I’ve read that a hundred years ago, scurvy was mostly an extinct disease in this part of the world. Maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t, but here and now, 2134 in New Liberty, this quarter lemon is all I get for a week, and you’d better believe I’ll be licking that plastic wrap clean.

  “Thanks,” I tell her. “I’ll just squeeze this into all the water I don’t have.”

  She looks genuinely confused.

  “What?” I ask.

  “What yourself,” she says. “Did you not notice—oh. You had them on mute again.”

  “I was trying to concentrate.”

  “You didn’t get my messages a few minutes ago?”

  This is easier to deflect than answer honestly. “What’d I miss?”

  She doesn’t reply. She just gets up and walks into the bathroom. There’s no light in there at all because there’s no window, but I can hear the distinctive beep of a water account being swiped at the sink, then the exquisite angelic choir that’s a faucet being turned on at full blast.

  If there’s a sound in the world that can get me out of bed fast enough I almost trip over my own feet, that’s evidently it. Jessa meets me in the doorway, holding out a much-reused collapsible silicone water bottle, full to the brim. I blink at it a moment, unsure it’s entirely real. Jessa guides it up toward my mouth, and I drink and drink until it’s empty.

  I don’t even know what to say. I look the question at Jessa, but she just grins back at me.

  “Water line comes to us today,” she says. “Check it out.”

  I narrow my eyes at her, but then I go over to the sink and press my thumbprint to the scanner. GOOD EVENING, MALLORY, the display reads. REMAINING ACCOUNT BALANCE: 25.325 GALLONS

  This can’t be right. That .325 gallon was my emergency stash, what little I’ve been trying to scrape back and save from each daily ration for pretty much ever.

  The twenty-five gallons on top of that is new.

  I’ve never had twenty-five gallons in my account at once. I’ve never had more than five gallons in my account at once. There is no way our subscribers donated that much. Our best single day’s haul was last summer when we ran into 38 and 02 playing chess in the park for the three and a half minutes it took 38 to lose, rip the table out of its concrete footing, and hurl it into a storefront across the street. Even that topped out around a gallon. Nobody has that much water to just give away. And if they do, they don’t pay streamers with it, they pay in credits or cash. At least in my admittedly limited experience.

  Alarms in the back of my mind begin to ping. It’s too good to be true, they’re saying. There are strings attached. You just can’t see them yet.

  I realize I’m still standing in front of the sink display, like it’ll start making sense if I just stare at it long enough. “Jessa,” I say, “what did you do?”

  “What did I do? You’re the one who found 28 and beat the cutoff to get us there. I just turned on the stream.” She grabs me and gives me a little shake. “Cheer up, will you? This is the best news we’ve had in months.”

  “You got twenty-five gallons too?” I ask, because my brain is going a mile a minute, but my mouth can’t figure out a better question to frame.

  “Sure did,” she says. “And that’s just the down payment. We start getting regular payments after we meet with the sponsor tomorrow. Which you would have known if you ever read your messages.”

  I’m barely listening to the I-told-you-so part of this. The alarms in the back of my mind are getting louder.

  “Down payment,” I say slowly, “for what?”

  “Check your messages!” she calls out, halfway to the door. “I got some debts I need to repay before I spend all this by accident! I am going to take such a shower—”

  “No, you need to tell me what’s going on.” I get between her and the door and lean against it, folding my arms. “This—” raising my chin toward the sink, where the display has finally timed out and blinked off—“looks like bait. Meet with the sponsor? What sponsor?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “They didn’t say much. They said they wanted to congratulate us in person. Noon tomorrow. They’re going to come pick us up.”

  “And that doesn’t sound like a trap to you?”

  “It sounds like twenty-five gallons down,” she says, “and another five per week. Each.”

  “Per week? To do what?”

  “You really shouldn’t put people on mute,” she says primly. “It’s rude.”

  “And congratulate us why exactly? For doing our job? Why in person? Why can’t they just message us like a normal sponsor? Why are they paying in water and not cash? Is this some creeper shit? Because if you got me into some creeper shit—”

  Jessa makes a face like I just spat in her coffee. “The fuck? No. It’s a sponsor, Mal. An actual sponsor like the big streams get all the time. This is a good thing. This is the break we’ve been waiting for.” A pause, and then, because apparently she hasn’t belabored this point to her satisfaction: “You could have asked them all this yourself if you hadn’t—”

  I take a deep breath, let it out pointedly slowly. She mistakes my silence for invitation.

  “It’s five gallons a week, Mal,” she says. “It’s the best sponsor we’ve ever had. By, like—” a nervy little laugh escapes her—“a considerable margin. In case you forgot, our entire business model is built on sponsors. This is how it’s supposed to work. Do you think WhisperWalker would be living up there somewhere in orbit right now if he chased his sponsors away at the starting line? Do you think Ecclectricity and Anachronista would—”

  Thunking commotion behind me as someone tries the door and fails. Jessa freezes.

  “Guys, let us in,” comes Tegan’s voice from the hall. “I’m going to spill this.”

  Say nothing, Jessa mouths at me. I give her a do-you-even-know-me look over my shoulder as I turn to open the door.

  It’s Tegan and Talya, carrying their daily water ration two-handed in old disposable plastic cups with their names written in black marker on the sides. Not that it will end up mattering. One of them will swipe sips from the other’s water, just like always, and there’ll be drama and screaming and possibly a fistfight in somebody’s bunk. The most melodrama that happens in this whole room, nine people crammed into a fourteen-by-fourteen-foot space, happens between the two of them, and for basically any reason you can think of. Then again, none of the rest of us are related, so maybe that explains it.

  “Hey,” Jessa tells them, brushing past on her way out into the hall. Off to pay those debts to whoever, I guess. I don’t ask, and she doesn’t volunteer the information.

  I leave too but go the other way. Down six flights of stairs to what was once the lobby when this place used to be a hotel. I’m going to hit the water line before it closes up for the night. Sure, there’s twenty-five gallons in my account today, but you can’t just look at now, you have to look ahead. You have to be careful and calculating. You have to play the long game. As much as I want to, I can’t bring myself to share Jessa’s optimism. As far as I can tell, no good thing lasts forever, and there are always plenty of bad things waiting to take its place.

  0003

  MY ALARM GOES OFF AT SIX THE next morning. For a moment I leave my eyes shut and enjoy it. I have it set to Woodland Serenity, so whatever I’ve been dreaming changes over to this huge redwood forest that I’m walking through, and all these birds are singing and the sun is rising in the distance between massive trees. It’s peaceful if you don’t think about it too long, about how the forest it’s based on is gone, and most of California with it. Here, now, in this crappy endless winter, it’s a nice enough way to wake up.

  Usually at this point I s
tay in bed for half an hour or so, pull on the blackout mask, and try to put a dent in my thousand before I have to get ready for work. But today I’m waiting for Jessa, because I’m not going to make it out of that playfield on my own with a dead blaster and one heal. And even if I wanted to stay in bed, my bladder has other ideas. All that water I drank last night.

  All that water.

  I’m wide awake now. I kill the alarm and check my messages since the power’s back on. There’s the daily public safety announcement: PHASE YELLOW—NO IMMEDIATE THREAT—EXERT CAUTION—ENJOY YOUR DAY, which is exactly what I need to see, because I work outside today, and I’m down to my last two masks. I make a note to pick up more downstairs and delete the announcement.

  Next is a whole wall of messages from Jessa, dated to last night, which I ignore. Trying to rope me into conversation on the stream, probably, in tones of increasing outrage. I’m sure I’ll be hearing from her any minute now, live and in person, so I slide all those into the trash along with the PSA.

  I poke my head real quick into BestLife. Not to play—I don’t dare log Nycorix back in to that death trap on her own, not without QueenOfTheRaids there tanking—just to see what our followers have given us for last night’s session. There’s a little gift box icon in the corner of the lobby screen, which I always take a moment to savor before opening. This usually turns out to be the best part of my day, and I want to make it last.

  Today there’s a tidy pile of stuff, none of it amazing, but it all adds up. I open the items one by one, glancing at the little notes people left with them. gg tnite nyx and don’t die out there! and it is my fondest hope that this token aids you in your journey and so on. There’s a little cash, a little more company credit. A few ounces of water. I swipe all that over to my account and then check out the in-game items.

  “Come on, power cell,” I whisper, like I can summon one by force of will alone. “Power cell power cell power cell.” Though I know it’s not going to happen.

  There’s some ammo for my blaster, though, and a bunch of low- to mid-grade heal patches. A helmet that’s the next level up from the one I’ve got on now. A shimmering, blue-black, crow-colored cape that does nothing whatsoever except look cool, which I am absolutely going to put on the exact second I log in. Some kind of shitty mesh boob-armor thing that I toss directly on the market because no.

  No power cell for the hoverbike. Unsurprising. This last one cost us thirty thousand credits, and while there are plenty of streamers out there who would happily blow their noses on thirty thousand credits, Jessa and I are not among them. If they’re top shelf, we’re maybe two shelves from the ground. So it looks like we’re on foot today.

  On the bright side, if we get our asses handed to us out there, people might give us more stuff. I never know why that happens, whether it’s that they want to help us out or that our suffering is quality entertainment worth paying for, but it happens.

  For now I close the game and climb down out of bed, careful not to wake Allie and Suresh in the bunks below. I grab my clothes and stumble into the bathroom to pee and get dressed as quietly as the quickprint jumpsuit fabric allows.

  The sight of the sink stops me in my tracks. I didn’t dream what happened yesterday, I’m upwards of ninety-five percent sure of it. The fullness of my bladder a minute ago, if nothing else, is proof. Still, it could have been some sort of elaborate prank. From somewhere, ancient stories pop into my head. Gold turning to leaves in your pockets overnight. I press my thumb to the scanner.

  GOOD MORNING, MALLORY. REMAINING ACCOUNT BALANCE: 20.885 GALLONS. Then the company mascot pops up on the display, cartoonishly eyeing me with gentle reprehension. IT LOOKS LIKE YOU’VE BEEN USING MORE WATER THAN USUAL, MALLORY. REMEMBER: STELLAXIS INNOVATIONS WELLSPRING™ WATER DISTRIBUTION PROGRAM SAVES LIVES, BUT WE ALL HAVE TO DO OUR PART TO CONSERVE THIS PRECIOUS RESOURCE!

  I wait for it to clear, then scan again. Same result.

  Last night, when I got to the water line, they were already on their last barrel and put up the cordon right behind me. One of the guards came around from the distribution side to man the cordon with his semiautomatic, facing backward toward the remainder of the line. I glanced over a shoulder. There were still seven people behind me holding their empty cups and bottles, and they all looked just as thirsty as I’d felt before Jessa had handed me that bottle. So I got out of line, gave the person behind me my spot, swiped a half gallon over to the accounts of each of the other six, and left without saying anything. Then I came back and washed my face and hair in the sink—really washed them, with soap and shampoo and hot water, like I haven’t done in the better part of a year—and filled up another bottle at the sink and drank it slowly, sitting on the floor with the door locked. I didn’t even care that it tasted like purification chemicals, or that it left my face papery and dry. It was water and it was mine.

  Almost twenty-one gallons left. After all that. It’s not that the math doesn’t add up. It’s just… the kind of thing you hear about happening to other people.

  In the background, part of my brain’s already scheming. This, plus five gallons a week as long as this mystery job lasts. If I’m careful, and add my daily ration to it, and don’t do anything stupid, I won’t have to pay for water, at least not to the tune of somewhere north of forty percent of my income, the way it is now. Some for laundry, maybe, and showers, and my share of the gardening water, but I’d have more than usual to drink. I could cut back on my jobs, make enough to pay for food and my space in the room, leave more time for the game. Get my thousand. Make the boards. Maybe even start to climb them. Any and then beyond that is the worst kind of self-indulgent daydreaming, therefore unproductive. First things first.

  I sneak out of the bathroom past the sleeping bodies, shrug on my coat, shoulder my backpack, and close the heavy door quietly behind me. The elevators haven’t worked the whole four years I’ve lived here, so it’s six flights down, just like always. I cut across the lobby, trying not to trip over the holes in the carpet, and on into the company store, which still has the CONFERENCE ROOM C plaque up by the door, just below the stars-and-arrow Stellaxis Innovations logo rendered in slowly rotating holo. I guess the company left it there to look retro. Above the door itself is more retro, neon this time, letters the size of my head: COMFORTS OF HOME.

  The store’s almost deserted this early in the morning. Just a brisk-looking woman selecting a donut, a couple of teenagers with obvious hangovers arguing over what painkiller to buy, and a man eating from a bag of chips as he walks it past the checkout scanner.

  I weave my way among winter coats, designer sunglasses and sneakers, plastic water bottles, candy bars, lens-cleaning kits, a whole shelf of dry shampoo and another of disposable face wipes, toilet paper, multivitamin tabs, batteries, makeup, a display of Stellaxis SecOps action figures, a self-serve ten-flavor soda dispenser, and so on. Your basic company store.

  This one’s out of filtration masks, because of course it is. I make a note to check again tomorrow, and wander over to park myself in front of the coffee machine.

  I fill up a medium, dump three sweeteners in the cup, buy a four-hour energy bar, and head out into the street, where the wind hits me like a cheese grater to the face. My coffee has gone cold before I so much as get it down the front steps onto the sidewalk. I finish it anyway—water’s water—then get my bike out of storage and head to my first job of the day.

  Like pretty much everyone I know, I have a bunch of different little jobs, some of which pay in cash or credit, some in water, some in random barter. I’ve had as many as seven at once, but right now I’m holding down four. The game is the most time-consuming one, obviously, but I don’t even know anyone who can maintain their expenses on one job alone. Last I heard, Tegan was juggling eight.

  So my other jobs right now are: I switch off days with Talya walking dogs. And Tegan and Suresh and Jackson and I shovel snow for people who still live in actual houses. Then on my own I’ve got this thing I’ve been t
rying for a few months where I add yeast to soda to turn it into something like beer for barter with other people in the hotel. I just threw out my third failed batch, but it’s not like soda costs much of anything, so I’ll probably try again someday. My bottles share windowsill space with everybody’s solar chargers and Keisha’s sprouting jars.

  Today I’m walking two dogs for the Carvalho family, who live in the old high school near the park. It’s cold, but the dogs are friendly, and it’s a hell of a lot better than a job that keeps you cooped up inside all day. All those office jobs they have down in the city? Sitting at a desk for eight-plus hours? I’d be climbing the walls.

  Jessa hates living in old town, but I like it. Whatever town this used to be, forty–fifty years ago before it was abandoned and they built New Liberty City on top of it, is cute in an old-timey kind of way. Sure, living in a hundred-year-old hotel can be loud and crowded and annoying, but it’s safe. There’s no fighting in the streets, no air strikes, no bombed-out buildings. Old town is neutral territory. Most days I don’t even need a filter mask to go outside.

  I get to the school quickly, lock up my bike, and let myself into the Carvalho family’s room. They’re off at work, as usual, so I gather up the dogs and walk them around the back field of the school. I’m not supposed to let them off-leash because of all the tents and garden plots and little kids running around, so I just take them to where there’s the remains of an oval track and jog them for a few laps, my mind busily gnawing away on the mystery of whatever Jessa’s gotten us into with this new sponsor. The sun is just coming up, not even pretending to take the edge off the cold.

  I’m a little over halfway through my paid hour when Jessa calls.

  “Change of plans,” she says without so much as a hello. She sounds like she’s been awake for about thirty seconds. “They want to meet with us as soon as possible. Where are you?”

  I’m too tired for sarcasm. “I’m at work,” I tell her. “Just like I am literally every other weekday at this time.”