“Never assume you know what a netrunner considers important. The grudge that seems petty to you may be the point.”— The Fixer network, operational notes
“Ahoj, Dashi. Nice to meet you and all that. You will be calling me Miss Natalya.”
The voice was warm, but I felt as if she was just speaking matter-of-factly.
I glanced over and gulped. The Czech was obvious, but the way she said Dashi was sweet and felt dangerous.
“Miss Natalya,” I said, going for a professional, adult tone. “Naiche told me you’d be in touch.”
“Oh, he did. Yes, I am. Get off at the next station.”
I blinked at the window; the river was still beneath us. The bridge supports were still sliding past at Schwarzstahl’s set pace for the train. The next station, by the line map embedded in the bulkhead, was Mahlangu Plaza in approximately three minutes, which was not a station I had any reason to be at. “The next station is Mahlangu. I’m going to Syntavelli's tailor.”
“You are going to Mahlangu first,” she said, still with that weird warmth.
I thought about how to politely decline, but was coming up blank. “What’s at Mahlangu?”
“Gift.”
“I don’t think—”
“Get off, Dashi. Two and a half minutes.” She wasn’t filtering anything, speaking fast. “Move.”
I sat still for one second longer, and then I declined the call.
The contact card blinked off the band, the bridge ended, the corporate corridor began, and the train slid into the long pale curve that would carry it through the freight yards and into Mahlangu Plaza in—
“Dashi.” Her voice was in my left ear.
It was the same weird cadence. It was also in my earpiece, which was my crappy one that I had configured. “Get off at Mahlangu,” it said, “or your morning becomes a bad morning.”
My pulse shot up, and I felt a bead of sweat form. “You’re—”
“Two minutes, Dashi. Move.”
The voice cut and the earpiece went back to its standby hum. I sat on a train two minutes out from Mahlangu Plaza and thought; she is in my comms.
The soreness behind my ribs gave its small, reminding tug. I noted it and ignored it while I stood up.
I made my way down the aisle without making eye contact with the suit-types or the woman or the sleeping child, and Mahlangu Plaza arrived under a vaulted glass roof in the pale corporate-corridor light that made everyone look slightly worse than they were.
The doors opened. I stepped off.
[Paid: ¢1]
The platform was busier than the train had been. Mahlangu apparently was a transfer station, three lines crossing two floors, and the morning crowd was the corporate-corridor morning crowd, wearing a lot of long coats.
Nobody paid attention to a tired twenty-year-old in a charcoal coat who was being told where to go by the voice in his head.
Time to bail?
“Down the escalator.” She had picked the call back up before I had finished registering the platform. “Lower concourse. Left at the bottom.” I went down the escalator. “Past the noodle stand. Past the ticket vendor. Keep walking.” I went past the noodle stand and past the ticket vendor and kept walking. “Luggage storage. End of the corridor. Bank C.”
The luggage storage was a long tiled hall lined on both sides with the brushed-steel face of a Kovara automated locker bank, A on the right, B on the right after that, C on the left, lockers floor to ceiling in tight five-by-twelve grids.
“Forty-seven.”
“How are you—”
“Camera in the corridor, two at the bank, one in the ceiling above your head. I am everywhere, Dashi. Forty-seven.”
I scanned the grid. Forty-seven was at chest height, second column from the left, four rows up. The display above the door showed a small green dot.
“Code is fifty-seven-one.”
I keyed them in and lo-and-behold, the locker opened.
Inside was a single small plastic bag, the kind that came from some corner shop that sold prepaid cards and Jeup energy gum, and inside the bag were two objects: a folded yellow mask and an earpiece.
The mask was a soft-shell half-face in the same yellow as my hoodie. Whoever had matched the dye had matched it to almost the same I used for my hoodie. Scary. The earpiece was a Kallum Holocomm Mark IV. The casing carried no serial number as if it came from somewhere under Eddy’s shop.
“Put them on.”
I trusted The Guild, but putting foreign things into my ear? “Miss Natalya—”
“Mask first. Earpiece second. Old earpiece in the bag. Bag in your pocket. Move, Dashi, you’re using my time.”
“I’d like to know—”
“The next sentence you finish that starts with I’d like is the one where things get unpleasant. Mask. Earpiece. Bag. Pocket.”
I thought about the version of objections that would survive the next twenty seconds of real conversation with the woman on the other end of the channel, and yeah… she will get into what she wants, eventually. The earpiece was an upgrade anyway.
I put the mask on.
The fit was good. Eerily good. The shell sat where it was supposed to sit; the seal at the cheekbones held without pinching.
I worked my old earpiece out of my left ear and slotted the new one in.
It was warmer than the old one. The handshake with the band was instant. I dropped the old earpiece into the plastic bag, folded the bag, and pushed it into the inside pocket of the charcoal coat, and the locker said thank you for using Kovara automated storage in a chirpy tone.
The contact card on the band lit up again. Miss Natalya.
I declined the call.
I was, I admit, doing it for purely cosmetic reasons. Some small piece of me that had not yet been trained out of believing in personal sovereignty of comms had to register, formally and on the record, that the second call was no more authorized than the first.
The voice was in my new earpiece. “Suit yourself, zlatíčko. You don’t need the old one anyway, right?”
The plastic bag in my coat pocket went pop.
It was a small pop, as if its small lithium-polymer battery was instructed to dump its full charge into the device’s communication coil in one and a half milliseconds. I felt the heat through the coat lining.
The contact card lit up a third time.
This time I accepted.
“What was that?” The words came out of my mouth faster than intended, and the man at the noodle stand twenty meters down the corridor glanced up, noted nothing of interest, and went back to his bowl. “What—Miss Natalya—what was that?”
“Demonstration.”
“That was my earpiece.”
“Was, yes.” She sounded amused saying it.
“I configured that earpiece personally. I disabled the over-air firmware path on day one. I keyed the radio to my paired only, on a single channel, with a hardware lockout that—”
“Dashi.”
“—that the manufacturer specifications say is—”
“Dashi. I’m a system netrunner. I can do things that should be impossible.“
I stopped.
I could hear, faintly, the click of fingers on a keyboard and realized she was not giving this conversation her full attention.
“Your band is interesting,” she said. “Custom Kallum, layered air-gap, segmented radio, your own firmware on top of the corporate firmware on top of the chipset firmware. Three layers I have to peel before I get to the chip. I will get there. I have ideas. Couple of weeks, maybe three. I am not in a hurry.”
“And my old earpiece?”
“Forty seconds. Anything on air, I own, Dashi. The earpiece talks over the air. Your band talks to the earpiece over the air. Between the two of them, I picked the easier one, and I went in. The other one I will get to. Patience.”
“And the—” I gestured vaguely at the coat pocket, at the dead thing inside it, at the smell. “The—”
“System skill. I have full control of a device on air; I can shut it down. Or burn it down. My choice.” She paused, but the keyboard tempo did not slow. “Mostly I shut things down. Burning is rude. Today is special.”
I closed my eyes. “Special.”
“You declined twice, Dashi.”
The keyboard tempo did slow, then. Just a little. Just enough that I understood she had, in fact, been giving me her partial attention the whole time.
“Walk back up the escalator,” she said. “Back to the platform. The next train is in four minutes. Mask stays on until I tell you. Earpiece stays in until I tell you. We are going to have a very productive working relationship, kotě, and we are going to start it by you understanding that decline is a button on your band and not a thing that exists between you and me.”
The contact card stayed lit.
The line did not cut.
I started walking back toward the escalator
“You owe me an explanation,” I said, going up. “I need more than some vague threats.”
“I gave you a gift, Dashi. You do a small favor in return. Normal economy of giving,” she said in the same warm voice.
I couldn’t stop my laugh. “That was not a gift. That was a hostage exchange.”
“Don’t get caught on a technicality,” she said and I could hear something in her voice. Suppressed laugh?
I reached the top of the escalator and walked toward the platforms along a route. “You destroyed my earpiece. You were very rude.”
“No,” she said. “I was efficient. People confuse the two. Effective people don’t have time to be polite for the camera. You will learn this, I am giving you the shortcut. You should thank me, but I do not require thanks. I am magnanimous.”
I gasped for an air. “Magnanimous.” In what world you are that?”
“Train is in two minutes.” I could hear the amusement now. “Platform six. Mask on. Earpiece in. Good Dashi.”
I reached platform six. The board overhead said the next inbound was northbound, and northbound meant deeper into the district, away from Sarisol, away from the appointment that Alice had spent nine messages and forty-eight exclamation marks on last night. “Where am I going?”
“Five stations. Get on the train.”
The train arrived under the vaulted glass roof in the same soundless Schwarzstahl glide the previous train had used, doors hissing open, two suits flowing past me onto the platform, and I stood at the threshold and… did not yet step on.
The Guild had vetted her, and Naiche had put her on a slate for a contract that would, by Saturday, have me standing in an air-gapped Aurelia server room with my life depending on the voice on the other end of the channel.
If the voice had wanted me dead, the voice had already have had me dead at the moment the old earpiece cooked itself in my pocket. The voice did not want me dead. The voice wanted me on a train.
Five stations were, by the line map, in a residential neighborhood. Mid-tier. Maybe she wanted to meet?
I stepped on.
The doors closed. The train lifted, eased forward, glided. I found a seat near the back of the car, against the bulkhead, and tucked the coat around me so the mask was the only part of the kit anyone was going to register. “Miss Natalya.”
The keyboard tempo on her end picked up briefly, then dropped, then picked up again. She was, per Naiche’s earlier framing, fast on contact and only intermittently in the room. “This is not how you ask for a favor.”
“It is.
“You do not ask for a favor by hijacking someone’s earpiece, redirecting their commute, and detonating the original device in their coat pocket. You should have asked me.”
The keyboard tempo slowed. “You would have said no. We would argue. I would plead. Perhaps and said no again.”
“I probably would have said yes.”
The keyboard paused. “This way is more efficient.”
“The Guild vetted you. That trust extended, by inheritance, to small favors of the kind you have just unforgivably described as the economy of giving. You did not need to do any of this. You did this because you—”
I stopped because I did not, in fact, know why she had done this. “You did this because you—” I tried again and gave up. “You did this. I would like to know why.”
The keyboard tempo stopped. There was the faint hum of the new earpiece, and there was the faint ambient noise of whatever room she was in.
“Miss Natalya?”
The hum continued. The Guild had vetted her for technical competence. Not for bedside manner. That was something I could work with. Whatever else was happening today, I did not have to do everything she told me to.
“Sorry.” The word was very quiet. I sat still, and I was not sure whether I had heard it.
“...Huh?”
“I said sorry, Dashi. Last time, I—I was rude. Lost the contract because of it. Three of them. Naiche told me. I promised to try. I am trying.”
“Okay,” I said. “What’s the favor?”
“Stand somewhere. Look menacing. That is a favor.”
“That—what?”
“Stand. Look menacing. I will tell you where. You will stand there. You will look menacing. Easy.”
“Miss Natalya, I do not actually know what menacing looks like on me. I have a yellow mask, a tactical hoodie, a cool sword, and a revolver in a holster I made yesterday. The aggregate of these elements is, at best, off-putting. At least four people on this train carry scarier weapons.”
“Off-putting is fine.”
“I would feel better if you told me—”
“It will make sense when you arrive, Dashi. I promise. I’m embarrassed as it is. You stand. You look. You leave. I owe you separately for the favor. We will discuss in person later when this is done.”
I sat back against the bulkhead and watched the district blur past the window.
—
I get off at the fifth station.
[Paid: ¢1]
The platform was quieter than Mahlangu had been. I came out of the station onto a wide pedestrian plaza, ringed on three sides by the residential highrises that, in Tago, were every neighborhood’s only available silhouette. Except central, of course.
“Left,” she said in my ear without preamble. I went left. “Across the plaza. Building with the dark-blue trim. Lobby is glass. Walk to the door.”
I walked across the plaza without slowing down. The dark-blue trim was easy to find. The lobby was glass, a long pane behind a slightly pebbled outer skin that pretended to be a sandstone facade and was not.
The door simply slid back into its recess with an unremarkable glide, and I walked in. “Take the stairs, not the elevator. Apartment three-F, end of the corridor.”
The third-floor corridor was mid-tier brushed concrete with mid-tier carpet running down the center. If Erika were here, we might look for carpet suppliers. Alas, I only had a voice in my head.
Apartment 3F was at the end. The door was a standard FutureTech residential, panel-and-handle, biometric on the panel, mechanical override on the handle. “Miss Natalya. I’m not going inside someone’s home.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I am not.”
“Dashi.” Her voice was softer than it had been at any point in the morning. “Listen. Inside is one man. He is alone. He is also a coward. Top-tier coward, documented. You do not have to do anything inside. You stand in the hallway, just inside. Door behind you. He sees you. He sees the mask. He sees the coat. He hears that you breathed. You leave, I talk to the man. That is the favor.”
“That is breaking and entering.”
“Door is going to open for you. No breaking.”
“That is entering.”
“Yes.” The small amusement was back. “It is. I owe you for it. One favor, owed by Natalya, redeemable by Dash Kallum, no expiration. Yes?”
I stood in front of the door. The hallway was quiet. The corridor’s lighting was the slightly cold Lutivex strip that the corporate corridor used in mid-tier residential because Lutivex had a contract for it.
I should not be doing this… I was, however, doing it. “Owed favor,” I said. “And we work on jobs together.”
“On Natalya’s word.”
“Open the door.” The lock disengaged with a quiet click. The door slid back into its recess. The apartment beyond was dim. From where I stood, I could see the corner of a couch, the edge of a window, the soft ambient glow of a screen left on a static feed.
I walked in.
The apartment smelled of reheated synth-noodles and stale air.
The screen took up most of the wall. A game was running on it, frozen on a death menu of some tactical shooter, a kill-feed scrolling usernames. The couch sat in the middle of the room, and the man on the couch did not look up when I walked in.
I stopped just inside the door as the game’s audio cut. The man’s thumb stopped moving on the controller, and his head tilted.
The wall speakers picked up. “Hi, TagoKiller44.” Natalya’s voice filled the room at a volume that was not friendly. “Not so brave now, are you?”
TagoKiller44 went still.
His head came up, and his gaze swept the room, and it caught on me in the third second. “Wha—” His voice cracked. “No way. Natty69?”
“In the flesh,” Natalya said. “Well. In the wall. Same thing.”
TagoKiller44 stood up. He did it badly. The controller fell out of his lap and clattered on the floor. “I told you,” Natalya said. The warm-on-top voice was back, and the warmth was not a thing it was pretending to do well. “Last week. Exfil camp. You friended me on the queue. You walked me to the exit. You C4’d the extraction button, kotě, and you laughed when it went off, and when I told you on chat you would regret it, what did you say?”
TagoKiller44 was silent. “You said you would punch me in the face.” She said it in the same patient, recounting tone someone might use to read a grocery list. “Do you remember saying that, miláčku?”
He nodded. It was a small, jerky nod. He could not seem to stop nodding. “So I hired one. Edgerunner. Local. He punches faces. It is what he does.”
The earpiece in my right ear clicked. “Dashi. You can go. Out the door, down the stairs, back to the platform. The train is in eleven minutes.”
I had not moved yet; I had to watch it a bit longer.
The wall speakers came back. “The Edgerunner will go out,” Natalya said, full-room volume, full-warmth voice. “He will wait. You and I are going to have a private talk first, TagoKiller44. About the C4. About the laugh. About what you say to women on chat when you think there are no consequences.”
TagoKiller44 yelped, which sounded like something you did when you stepped on a toy on the floor.
I turned around.
The door slid open in front of me at the same soft, deliberate pace. I walked through it. The door slid closed behind me, and the corridor’s slightly cold Lutivex strip did its slightly cold work on the carpet.
I made it to the stairs before I spoke. “Miss Natalya.”
“That whole thing. Was it—” I worked through the sentence on the second-floor landing and gave up and started over on the first. “Was it really—”
“Yes.”
“For a—”
“Yes, Dashi.”
I came out into the lobby. The pebbled-sandstone facade pretended at me. The plaza pretended back. A man with a small dog walked past the dark-blue trim and did not look up.
“Miss Natalya, in a video—”
“Thank you for the favor,” she said. “Train is in nine minutes.”
The contact card stayed lit, but the line, in every sense that mattered, was already gone. I crossed the plaza, and I thought about the man on the couch, and a kill-feed in a game I had never played.
The platform sign said eight minutes.
I took the mask off, folded it, put it in the inside pocket of the coat next to the dead earpiece in its plastic bag, and joined the small queue of people who were, like me, going to the next station for entirely legitimate reasons.
What a wild morning.