They tried to tear free, but the host had them tight. Soo-hyun smiled—the Devil’s smile, JD called it, all teeth and mischief—then slammed the heel of their palm into the woman’s nose.
The host screamed a lilting strangled sound as both hands went to her face.
“Say hi to your surgeon for me,” Soo-hyun said, then shoved the woman aside and ran for the stairs.
“Bro, I think I’m in love.”
JD took Khoder’s arm and pulled the kid toward the exit. “You’ll get over it.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
JD’s knee throbbed with every step down toward the ground floor. The acrid smell of smoke stuck in his nose, while all around him the stairwell echoed with the dull thud of footsteps, intercut with peals of excitable chatter. Now that they were clear of the fire and the sprinklers, half the diners were babbling, happy they’d finally have something interesting to talk about at work. Some would be retelling this nothing story for years, elaborating it piecemeal until it was an epic conflagration they conquered with bottles of complimentary tap water.
He hit the street just behind Khoder, joining a loose crowd of fifty-odd people—diners, staff, and rubberneckers loitering on the sidewalk. They held umbrellas, jackets, or pilfered menus over their heads to shield themselves from the steady rain.
Khoder put a cigarette between his lips and started patting his pockets, searching for a light. Soo-hyun appeared behind him, and with a flash of silver they lit Khoder’s smoke. They secreted the Zippo away before producing the Faraday bag weighed down with deconstructed phones. JD grabbed the two pieces of his and slotted them into different pockets of his windbreaker—better to get away from the crime scene before transmitting GPS data.
The restaurant manager emerged from the stairwell, trailed by kitchen workers in food-stained uniforms and waitstaff sans veils. Between heaving breaths she called out: “We need everyone to remain calm! Please stay put until the police arrive.”
“Fuck that,” Soo-hyun said. They grabbed JD by the arm and pulled him away from the emergency exit and deeper into the growing crowd. Khoder followed. “Send me the kid’s contact details once you’re back online. Khoder,” Soo-hyun said, taking the teen’s attention away from his reconstructed phone, glowing dimly as it powered up. “I’ll send you those photos; get me the van driver’s name and address as soon as possible.”
“Sure thing,” Khoder said without taking his eyes off the screen.
Sirens sounded in the distance, dopplering off the flat skyscraper faces. To the west, the streets were painted in flashing reds and blues, the emergency service lights intensely bright against the stagnant facade of the unAugmented city.
JD lifted his foot off the ground, bent his knee, then straightened it, wincing at the pain. “Next time, tell me when you’re going to pull that shit so I can take the elevator first.”
If Soo-hyun heard him, they didn’t respond. They just clapped him on the shoulder and yelled over the wail of approaching fire and police: “Wear Korean team colors tomorrow. Red and blue, okay?” They slipped into the gathering crowd and disappeared into the press of bodies.
“Tomorrow then, Khoder,” JD said.
The kid was still intently focused on his phone, but he nodded, his cigarette cherry bobbing like a firefly.
JD inhaled sharply and braced himself, then pushed into the crowd, ignoring the pleas from the restaurant manager and the pain spiking his knee. Once he’d gotten free of the throng, JD walked east under the ceaseless rain, wincing with every second step.
He cursed his own judgment, along with his aching knee: Soo-hyun hadn’t changed. They never would. Setting fire to a restaurant that they were stuck inside, fifteen stories up. It was reckless. They were meant to be better than that.
Three blocks later, with the disco of police and fire department lights far behind him, JD stopped. He sat on a park bench—barely recognizable as such, its angular geometric shape meant for sitting but never sleeping. He put his phone back together while he stretched his leg.
After a few seconds he laughed despite himself. Soo-hyun had set a curtain on fire to skip out on a bill. Who does that?
He shook his head, anger at Soo-hyun washed away in the rain. He never could hold a grudge, especially not with family. He shook his head again, and felt the adrenaline ebb out of his veins with a shudder.
He blinked his phone on, and after a few seconds of initialization it came to life with a happy chirrup. JD noticed the letters “NKBK” painted messily on the wall in front of him—the inexplicable north korea best korea, like on the outskirts of Liber—then his Augmented feed kicked in, obscuring the graffiti behind a shimmering billboard for no-streak mascara.
Even reconnected to the city feeds, the street seemed eerily quiet. There was minimum biomass moving along the sidewalk, just the occasional cute couple or triple on date night, huddled under shared umbrellas, and homeless people with nowhere else to go. JD smiled at a pair of young guys only to watch their love-struck looks fall away when they saw him sitting there, soaking wet with his leg stretched out across half the path. They steered wide of him, conversation dead on their lips until they were sure he was out of earshot.
JD put the city from his mind and opened VOIDWAR. He looked up at the patch of sky between towers as he waited for the game to log in, but saw nothing of the explosive action from earlier in the night. He scanned the game’s news feed and saw Khoder was right: the massive battle had unfolded in Stokoe, involving three large factions with another half-dozen smaller ones joining in to take advantage of the situation.
Early reports suggested close to two million euro worth of ships, stations, and weapons had been lost, but Zero Corp would never release the actual figures; that data was restricted to board members and shareholders. Regardless, the Stokoe system was going to be lousy with scavengers
