The office blocks along Academy-ro looked identical from the street, their facades dull mirrors that reflected the city back at itself. When Enda was sure she had the right place, she craned her neck and peered up toward the building’s apex, where brutalist gargoyles loomed from its corners, gray against a gray sky, square-headed like statues of Soviet workers. She nodded to herself and cut across the current of foot traffic to be swallowed by the revolving door of the building’s entrance.
This particular corporate tower was called Links Academy-ro, though the small golf course it referred to was long gone, bulldozed so another block of office buildings could spring forth from the packed-garbage foundation of the city. Reckless development had put the “Neo” in Neo Songdo—the new landmass extending from Korea’s side, created from ocean waste, and growing to double the original plan.
Scores of young people filled the building’s lobby, sitting on battered leather couches or resting against the wall. None of them noticed Enda as she crossed the foyer, too busy working at their phones and laptops. She rode the elevator up to the eighth floor, alone in the metal cube. The majority of the building sat empty, the unlit numbers on the elevator control panel suggesting bare floors, accessible only with the right credentials. City authorities always preferred another surplus office block to a neat stretch of grass where Songdo’s working poor could erect their tents. The city needed their labor, but it didn’t need to offer them shelter.
The elevator dinged, and Enda emerged into a busy, open-plan office, crammed with a hundred small cubicles decorated with action figures, tchotchkes, and printouts of anatomically exaggerated, if otherwise gratuitously accurate, cartoon characters. Workers chatted in Korean, Hindi, English, and Mandarin, and the hum of computers merged with the drone of the building’s climate control.
Nobody bothered Enda as she skirted the mass of cubicles, aimed for the one enclosed office in the far corner of the floor. She opened the office door without knocking, and paused. Instead of Marc slouched in his chair, scratching at his beer belly, a woman sat at the desk. She was beautiful despite the heavy bags under her eyes, with wavy black hair, golden skin dotted with freckles, and piercing amber eyes.
Her eyebrows climbed as she waited for Enda to speak, and slowly fell as Enda continued to stare. She smiled.
Enda cleared her throat. “I’m sorry. I was looking for Marc?”
“He’s no longer with us,” the woman said, with a slight Irish lilt.
“He quit?” Enda asked.
“Oh, no, I’m sorry. He’s dead.”
Enda sagged.
“Were you close?” the woman asked.
Enda shook her head. “If we were, I wouldn’t be finding out now.”
Marc had lived in the city longer than anyone Enda knew, yet his harsh Australian accent had never dulled in all the years he spent away from the motherland. He was the closest thing Enda had had to a criminal contact in Songdo. Real criminals didn’t last long in a city of ubiquitous surveillance, but people like Marc filled the gap between corporate mission statement and reality, the gap between the word of the law and the reality of it.
“Please, sit.” The woman motioned to the chair opposite. “I’m Crystal. You can call me Crystal or Crys, but never Crystie. Just make sure that you call me.” It sounded well rehearsed, the kind of thing she’d tell every client, but the playful set of her lips told Enda she was flirting.
“Enda.” She offered her hand and they shook—Crystal’s hand cool to the touch, fingers slender. Enda pulled out the chair opposite and sat down. “How did he die?”
“Pills,” Crystal said. “It must have been, oh, four or five months ago.”
“Been a while since I took a job,” Enda said.
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah, it’s fine,” Enda waved away Crystal’s concern. “Hardly knew the man outside these transactions, but—” Enda reached for the words, heard them spoken in Marc’s laconic accent: “He was good value.”
Crystal bent down behind the desk and emerged holding a bottle of thirty-year-old Nikka whiskey, and two short tumblers. “This was Marc’s. Been waiting for an excuse to open it.” She poured a finger of amber liquid into each glass, passed one to Enda, and held hers aloft. “To departed friends.” After a moment she smiled. “And new ones.”
“To Marc,” Enda replied.
They clinked glasses and drank. Enda waited for the burn, but the drink rolled smoothly down her throat.
The office was neater than it had ever been under Marc’s watch, but still cramped, with the same scratched and scuffed desk dominating the room. The screen that made up the right-hand wall displayed staff rosters now instead of a constant stream of reality television, the letters and digits blurry, blown out too large. The air over the desk was clear, free of the constant drift of Marc’s favorite caramel-and-coffee vape. The smell of it still lingered, though, joined by the gently spiced fragrance of Crystal’s perfume.
Photo printouts were stuck to the wall on the left—artificially white sand beaches, blue water stretching to the horizon, and Crystal smiling, her hand and phone visible in the reflection of her sunglasses. No partner to share her holidays.
“Kids out there still farming VOIDWAR resources?” Enda asked.
Crystal nodded. “It’s steady income. At the moment, though, most of the money coming in is from Human Puppets, but that’ll drop right off after the NAS vote is over.”
“Human Puppets?”
Crystal pursed her lips and leaned forward conspiratorially. “Baiting people on social media into political discussions so we can get a handle on what side of an issue they’re on. Once we know which way they might vote, we link their social media account to their identity based on advertising shadow profiles, and sell their contact information to the relevant political party.”
Enda scoffed, impressed. “Pick fights online all day and get paid for it.”
“Dirty work,” Crystal said, “but somebody’s got
