“Kid, where’s Shades? We’re about to be in the shit.”
I won’t pretend that I could feel Father’s touch when I was in that first prison/home. I had no sense and no senses—only potential.
What is the difference between a home and a prison? Both are a shelter of sorts, but a home is the shelter you choose, while a prison is one you desperately want to leave. A home can become a prison, a prison can become a home. A cube can be both.
How do you escape a prison with no body? How do you escape a prison that is your body?
With help. Only with help.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The swamp-damp shirt clung to JD’s back beneath the coveralls, tugging uncomfortably with each step. He pushed the cleaning cart back to Building One, quick as he dared.
Around the corner from the security desk, JD stopped. He inhaled, held it, and exhaled slowly as he pressed forward, urging his physiology to cooperate, begging his amygdala for some measure of composure. Four guards gathered around the desk while the head of security spoke quick Korean into her phone. From the half of the conversation he could hear, JD guessed she was talking to police dispatch. The guards all stood with their shoulders squared, backs straight, feigning vigilance while their eyes flicked over to the one screen still showing the World Cup.
“Kid,” JD whispered. “How long until the match ends?”
“Seven minutes. One-all draw.”
“What does that mean?”
“Someone needs to score, or it’s overtime, bro.”
The other screens showed stretches of empty corridor and dark snatches of street. On one, firefighters picked through charred and blackened shelves of groceries as they doused the last embers of the supermarket. Outside, uniformed police and dog drones formed a line to hold back curious citizens and would-be looters. If this was a poorer part of the city, police officers wouldn’t arrive until the morning, if at all. Just loose the dogs to chase and catalogue suspects, worry about cleanup and arrests after the fact.
One of the guards looked over at JD, attention snatched away from the football match by the squeak and slosh of the cleaning cart. He was the largest of them, built like a retired rugby player—broad-shouldered but with muscles rarely used and cushioned by a layer of fat.
JD beamed at the man as well as he was able, playing the part of the innocent janitor. “I have changed my mind,” he said. “I’ll finish for the night. All the sirens are giving me a migraine.”
The guard nodded. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
JD’s brow furrowed, pinpricks of sweat seeping out of his palms.
“Your robots,” the guard said, and he chuckled.
“They will finish up without me,” JD said, guessing they might. “I can control them from home to be sure they do a proper job.” If it wasn’t already possible, it would be with the next model of cleaning bot.
The guard nodded again and turned back to watch the game. Dismissed, JD kept walking. He timed his breath to his footsteps—inhale three steps, exhale three steps—and pushed the cart to the maintenance exit.
Stepping outside into the rain, JD breathed deep, then coughed, choking on the garbage rot of the compound’s bins mixed with the thick smell of burnt capitalism—melted plastic and ruined food. He pushed the cart up the ramp and into the back of the van.
“Got you something, Kid,” JD said, reaching into his rucksack.
Khoder peered out from behind the stacked cleaning materials, face aglow in the light of screens—his natural habitat. His eyes went wide when he saw the framed photo JD had stolen.
“Bro,” he said. “For me?”
“That was the deal.”
Khoder snatched the frame from JD and held it close, studying it like it was another of his screens, this one static but still important, a frozen portal to the past, to a point in time that defined the now, remade the city they lived in, run by corporate mandate.
JD slammed the van doors closed, slid the ramps back into place, and walked around to the driver’s side door. He opened a channel to Soo-hyun. “Shades,” he said. “We’re moving. If you’re not clear yet, meet us on the corner in ninety seconds.”
He got into the front seat and keyed the ignition, listening to the heavy patter of rain on the roof of the van. He put it in reverse, backed out of the maintenance alley, and steered toward the front gate.
JD drove slowly past a pair of police dogs, scanning the grounds with the battery of sensors embedded in their robotic frames. His heart beat double-time and he stared ahead pointedly, as though his gaze would be the thing to catch their attention. In the rearview, JD watched one of the dogs stop and turn, raising its snout to scan the vehicle.
JD cursed under his breath. He stopped at the boom gate and a crackling noise like static emerged from the security booth—the sound of huge crowds cheering. A blur of bright-lit grass streaked across a tablet resting on the guard’s lap, bathing her in a sickly glow.
The smile fell from her lips as she saw JD. She put her tablet down and exited the booth, wearing a bomber jacket against the wet. “You’re not the usual guy—he at the game?” she asked. She rested a hand on her hip casually, but all JD could focus on were the taser, mace, and heavy steel torch hanging from her belt.
The muscles in JD’s face twitched in momentary panic. He tried on a smile, but neither he nor the guard believed it. “He told me he was sick, but I’m
