Troy nodded. “We should do this again; catch up, talk.”
“I’d like that.” JD walked to the door, and started to pull the sweatshirt up over his head but Troy stopped him.
“Give it back to me next time; you’ll catch your death otherwise.”
JD nodded, and retrieved his clothes from the hat rack, stuffing his wet shirt into his bag, and putting the windbreaker on over the sweatshirt.
“When are you doing this job?” Troy asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“Do you need me to drive you?”
JD shook his head. “I can’t have you getting involved.”
“Should I be worried?” Troy asked. “About the job.”
JD sighed. “It’s basically just a repossession.”
“But an illegal one,” Troy said pointedly.
JD shrugged. “Legal jobs can be dangerous too. Just because you’ve got the paperwork doesn’t mean someone’s going to let you walk up and take their car.”
The corner of Troy’s mouth twitched down, but he didn’t speak.
“The mark is either dead or dying; we’re just taking something before his children show up to fight over the will.”
Troy grunted quietly. “Still,” is all he said.
“If it works out, it could be my last illegal job for a while,” JD said, “maybe ever. Enough of a cushion that I could go legit. I know that’s what you wanted.”
“It’s what I wanted you to want, Jules. There’s a difference.”
JD opened the door.
“Stay safe,” Troy said.
JD nodded, and pulled the door shut.
Massive battles played out in the sky overhead, but JD ignored them. He walked slow across town, rain soaking into his hair, the ache in his knee submerged beneath other pains, shared heartbreak.
When he got home, his roommates were all yammering in a mix of Korean, Hindi, and English—tactical chatter and twitchy banter. They didn’t notice him arrive, their eyes masked, ears plugged with noise-canceling headphones, and hands clutched tight to VR controls.
He left the pilfered kimchi in the communal refrigerator as a sacrifice to the god of sharehousing, but stashed the leftover chicken and calamari in the small fridge beneath his bed—resting beside his main rig, accompanied by dust bunnies and assorted detritus. His rig still hummed steadily, creating the new system for VOIDWAR’s servers, but JD didn’t bother logging in to check its progress. Instead he crashed out, with Troy’s sweatshirt bundled up on the pillow beside his head.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The afternoon sun peeked between gaps in the heavy cloud cover, drawing sweat from JD’s skin. He gave himself three hours to make the two-hour journey to the cleaner’s apartment—wary of the surveillance apparatus floating over the city, disguised by AR vision but ever-present. He mixed up his gait, using his natural limp to a corner, then crossing the street walking as “normally” as possible until he reached the corner of the next block, hoping the city’s algorithms would lose him each time in the crowd of pedestrians. He couldn’t risk following a map, having his every step tagged by GPS, so he silently repeated a mantra of street names and directions to guide him.
When he was just a few blocks from the apartment, JD ducked into a convenience store for a bottle of water, and stood on the sidewalk drinking it. Absently he watched advertisements crawl across the building opposite—the color and motion catching his eyes even if their contents didn’t make an impression on his conscious mind.
JD reached a hand into his rucksack and mentally inventoried the gear he needed for the job, careful not to reveal anything to the network of cameras that nested on lamp poles, streetlights, gutters, and awnings. He checked everything by touch:
Rough canvas fabric of his coveralls;
Rigid brim of his baseball cap;
Scratchy poly-blend wool scarf in South Korean soccer red;
Smooth vinyl pouch of his lockpick set;
Bundle of plastic zip ties;
Rubbery feel of latex gloves;
Hard, flat casing of two datacubes—the one from inside the police dog’s skull, the other holding all the details of the job.
Satisfied, JD carried on. It was still early, but already the roads were congested with auto-cars and ride-shares crossing the city toward Songdo Stadium. He turned a corner and walked through stalled traffic—the street becoming an impromptu car park watched over by two glowing red eyes. The footpaths on both sides of the road surged with crowds dressed in red and blue, broken up by pockets of Brazilian bright green. At street corners, ubiquitous advertising gave way to stadium directions and mealy-mouthed suggestions for good behavior, as though some focus-tested slogans would stop people from rioting if the mood took them, or if the game didn’t pan out the way they wanted.
Traffic passed in fits and starts, cars and vans decorated with the red, blue, and white of the South Korean soccer team—scarves and streamers hanging from windows, stickers adorning bumpers, glass paint on rear windows.
The light turned and he kept walking. He rounded a corner and spotted Soo-hyun and Khoder waiting up ahead on the other side of the road, wearing matching coveralls and baseball caps. Khoder was still trying to affect cool with a cigarette pinched between two fingers; Soo-hyun wore knockoff Ray-Ban aviators, reflections of the street where their eyes should be. JD guessed Soo-hyun was trying to look inconspicuous, but with their arms crossed over their chest and their lips twisted in a snarl they looked like a low-level gangster, resting up between extortion visits.
As JD waited to cross the street, a cloud front moved to block the sun. He shivered. He didn’t need to see the clouds to know that more rain was coming; he just had to listen to the whisper of his knee as it swelled and ached with the shifting air pressure. He ambled quickly between cars, stepping up onto the sidewalk to join Soo-hyun and Khoder.
“You ready?” he asked Soo-hyun, two of him caught in the lenses, staring back at the real one.
“Born ready,” they said, deadpan.
Khoder passed JD a small bundle of black wire—AR projectors attached to clips for his cap. “Mike Tyson, bro. Heavyweight champion.”
“You calling me fat?” JD said. He
