He climbed the pagoda steps, surrounded by a mess of pigeons. They cooed among themselves, and their mangled feet scraped against the wooden floor as they picked at scraps of food, most of it already sullied by bird droppings. JD stepped gingerly through the pigeons to join Andrea. He rested against the railing and felt the dusty crust of droppings.
“Where’s Soo-hyun?” JD asked, wiping his hand on his pants.
The girl rolled her eyes and sneered. “You don’t fucking dictate terms to Kali,” she said. “You really fucked up this time.” The girl squinted, her eyes seeming to scan the park with an awareness beyond her years. JD followed her gaze, saw only the park’s residents and an oppressive sheet of rain. When he turned back to face Andrea, a small swarm of fireflies had gathered, flitting aimlessly beneath the pagoda roof.
“Do you have the money?” JD asked.
Andrea shook her head. “I told you, you fucked up. She needs the virus, and she doesn’t trust you anymore.”
“I’ll call her,” JD said.
“It’s too late for that. I’m here to take it off you.”
“What if I don’t hand it over?” JD said, looking down at the girl.
Andrea smiled sweetly, showing two missing teeth. “It’s not up to you anymore.”
It happened too fast, each moment rendered in JD’s mind like a series of screenshots. The fireflies rushed for JD’s face and he flinched back, swatting at their tiny lights. The swarm glimmered and disappeared, and a blurred glitch flashed sideways across his vision. A bullet. It whistled as it passed inches in front of him—passed over Andrea and right through the space his head had occupied moments before.
Chank. The bullet struck a vertical post supporting the pagoda’s roof. Splinters of hardwood burst from the wound—a dozen tiny spikes embedded themselves in the skin of JD’s arm.
Boom. Gunshot. A third of a second after the bullet had torn past his face. JD dropped to the ground, pinning three pigeons beneath him while the rest took flight in a flurry of pink, gray, and white. Another chank and more splinters filled the air, joining the feathers that drifted slow to the ground.
Andrea screamed like a child on a rollercoaster, fear and ecstasy combined. JD grabbed her by the hand and yanked her down to the ground. All around the square people ran—some fled the technopark, others dived into their tents as though the fabric walls could stop high-caliber rounds.
JD’s vision pitched, and his head swam as he rose above the pagoda, above the park, drone-eye view climbing until it came level with the roof of a squat office block. The camera zoomed in tight on Red—the lanky teen crouched on the building’s rooftop with a 3D-printed Dragunov sniper rifle, a white bandage over the bridge of his nose, the flesh beneath it badly bruised from the car crash. Red raised the gun to his shoulder and JD rolled blindly, feeling the last of the pigeons flutter out from underneath him as another burst of splinters exploded beside his head.
His eyes blurred with visual artifacts, then he was staring at Andrea. She had opened the flap on his rucksack and was digging through the tools, zip ties, and other bits and pieces that weighed it down. JD snatched the bag away from the child and she bared her teeth, as though ready to attack.
Another chank and the distant boom of gunfire changed her mind. JD covered his head with his arms while Andrea scurried out from beneath the pagoda, running into the rain, quickly getting lost in the rush of fleeing bodies.
He waited for another shot, heard instead the whine of approaching police sirens.
With the stolen datacube still slotted into his phone, JD ran.
The door opened before JD could even knock. Troy stood in the opening, with his black leather satchel slung over one shoulder, a travel coffee mug in his hand.
He sighed when he saw JD. “I’m going to work. I don’t have time to talk, and I don’t know if I even—”
“They tried to kill me.”
Troy stopped. “Come inside.”
If the city is a body, then violence is a virus.
Gunfire erupted in a crowded park. The sound registered on surveillance apparatus. Satellite heat-maps showed the panicked flight of bodies away from the site.
Police reacted with brutal efficiency. Drone dogs delivered by armored auto-trucks, while sirens warned of more police en route. Like rogue antibodies, they attacked everything—parents, children, delinquent teens, the homeless. The violence of others used as an excuse for the violence of authority.
JD was hunted. Frightened by the reach of Kali, and the lengths to which Red would go.
He did not know how, or if, he would be saved.
Neither did I.
PART TWO
Gumshoe Protocol
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Enda Hyldahl beat a steady rhythm along the sidewalk as she ran. Her mind was utterly blank, the usual chaos of her thoughts replaced with a short count on loop: one, two, three, four. She inhaled one count. Exhaled one count. It was the closest she got to meditation—running until her mind finally, mercifully, shut … the fuck … up.
It was dawn, and the city yawned open for her. Traffic was sparse, footpaths barren but for other runners. In that moment, if Enda could spare any thought at all for those joggers, it would be one of pity. Running with their phones, running to music, to podcasts, to audiobooks; too weak to simply run.
Too weak? Or do they not hate themselves enough?
Enda cursed beneath her rasping breath. That is why she ran. To keep the hate at bay.
She reached a crossing and stopped, bent over heaving while delivery auto-trucks poured past, hauling food from the shorefront before Songdo woke. Enda put her hands on her sides and inhaled deep. She held it. She stood straight and exhaled as she looked up to the
