“You’re gonna have to get in the back,” JD told Khoder.
“Got something for you, bro,” Khoder said. He reached into his backpack and produced a small round object, like a hockey puck with a button embedded in its center. He slapped it into JD’s hand. “Electronic key cloner.”
“How’s it work?”
“Just get close, and push the button.”
“How close?”
Khoder shrugged. “One meter? Two?” He climbed into the back of the van and started pulling more equipment from his bag. Collapsible rig, tablet, two phones, and a portable battery the size of a shoebox.
“Jesus, Khoder,” JD said, impressed.
Khoder plugged a cable into one of the cleaning bots, tapped a command on his rig, waited ten seconds, then repeated the process for the next robot.
“What are you doing?”
“Scanning their memories, bro. Floor plans, all that shit.”
JD nodded and left him to it. He took the coveralls out of his bag and pulled them on over his clothes. At the far end of the car park the basement door crashed open, and Soo-hyun’s footsteps echoed in the hollow space as they approached.
“I hope you didn’t hurt him too bad,” JD said.
“He’ll live. Let’s go.”
JD closed the rear doors, and he and Soo-hyun sat in the front of the van. Omar had a kitschy old air freshener hanging from his rear-view mirror, shaped like a pine tree.
“Are we good?” JD asked.
“I told you, he’ll be fine.”
“That’s not what I mean. Tell me you’re not going to do anything dangerous, or I walk.”
Soo-hyun stared at him for a moment, their expression unreadable behind the glasses. “This whole thing is dangerous. If you want out, tell me now before it’s too late.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I need to know you won’t lose it.”
Soo-hyun exhaled loudly. “I’m fine. I’m better than fine. Now, can we go?”
JD sighed and started the engine.
He drove them out of the basement and onto the street, squinting in the blinding-low sunlight. He fumbled with the car’s controls and struggled to remember the last time he’d driven regularly. Before the stint in the university tech department? He repossessed a couple of small trucks and a few cars each year, but every time it was like learning to drive all over again; he knew what he needed to do, but lacked the muscle memory to do it smoothly.
They pulled up at a set of traffic lights, and Khoder shoved one of his phones through the gap between the seats.
“I built a 3D model of the building,” he said.
“Already?” JD asked.
“Security desks, elevators, apartment doors, everything.”
“Nothing inside the apartments,” JD said.
“Our Omar bro doesn’t clean the apartments, just the complex. That’s what the key cloner is for.”
The light turned green and JD pushed Khoder’s arm out of the way and hit the accelerator too hard, almost ramming the car in front—traffic still crawling with the density of World Cup crowds.
They drove, JD and Soo-hyun not talking, steady noise of traffic all around them and the lilting chatter of Khoder quietly talking to himself in the back of the van.
Nearing the compound, Soo-hyun reached an arm across JD’s line of sight to point. “There,” they said.
Red and eight other adolescents milled on a street corner, clutching conspicuously large duffel bags. With the game about to begin, they were the only people on the sidewalk, obviously reveling in the fact, passing around cans of cheap beer and tagging every flat surface with a dozen variations of NKBK.
JD stopped the van beside the clutch of miscreants. “What’s this diversion you’re planning?”
“You’ll know it when you see it,” Soo-hyun said.
“I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”
Soo-hyun took their sunglasses off and slotted them into the V of their coverall. They pushed open the door, and tossed their taser onto his lap. “Don’t worry your pretty little head, hyung.”
“I do worry,” JD said as Soo-hyun slammed the door closed behind them. He held the taser with two fingers, trying to decide what to do with the weapon. He pocketed it, delegating the decision to his future self.
“Just you and me, Khoder,” he muttered, pulling back into traffic. If the kid heard him, he didn’t reply.
They drove around the block to the enclave entrance. After a half second for the cameras to read the van’s plates, the boom gate lifted and JD drove beneath it, picturing the view from the restaurant as he guided the van to the maintenance access. He opened the van’s door and paused, smacked in the face by the scent of sickly-sweet rot and rodent feces.
“Can you hear me, Khoder?” JD said into his headset.
“Loud and loud, bro.”
JD walked around to the rear doors and opened them both up. “You better hope the van is airtight, because the smell out here is disgusting.”
“Be quick with the doors then, asshole,” Khoder said, voice doubling in JD’s ear. He was dimly lit by the screens that surrounded him, eyemask over his face for complete digital insertion.
“Yeah yeah yeah,” JD muttered. It took him the better part of a minute to find the ramps for the bots, which were recessed underneath the van’s chassis. He slid the two metal planks out, then maneuvered the four cleaning bots down onto the ground behind the van, followed by the cleaning cart loaded with mop, bucket, and his rucksack.
“Alright, Khoder, I’m going in.”
JD keyed the robots’ power, and followed them into the nearest rampartment building as they happily blooped, ready to go to work.
CHAPTER NINE
The cleaning cart squeaked sharply with every push, weighed down with a steel bucket filled with water, and tubs of solvent and floor polish. JD topped up the different bots according to Omar’s notes and triggered their cleaning routines. The four machines spun, whirred, and whined, projecting holograms of slipping stick-figure people as they moved up the corridor. When the bots moved on from a section of floor, the building’s Augmented feed
