“You can relax,” Soo-hyun said; “the dog is one of ours.”
JD pivoted slowly on the spot, until both the dog and Soo-hyun were in his field of view. Soo-hyun stepped out from the shadow of an off-brand convenience store, long-shuttered. Behind them, another five figures leered from the darkness, their contex gleaming in the low light.
A nasal voice spoke from the dark: “We don’t need him.” Australian or South African—JD could never tell the two accents apart.
“Who are your friends?” JD asked.
“Ignore Red,” Soo-hyun said. “He’s jealous that Kali chose my plan over his.”
Red murmured something under his breath. He moved into the muted light, followed by four other teens—gender indeterminate, wearing ill-fitting T-shirts emblazoned with cartoon animals, jeans marked with holes and trailing threads at the hems. Red clutched the long form of a marksman rifle, 3D-printed in gaudy orange, like something out of a first-person shooter. He tossed it back to one of the others, and JD noticed they were all armed with squat carbines in blotches of random color, and knockoff Berettas printed default gray.
The others stayed back while Red approached. He was taller than JD, but gangly, skin freckled ginger and stretched taut across his frame, red hair in a loose ponytail. His lips looked pink and slightly swollen; he licked and bit and chewed at them, his mouth always moving.
“We don’t need him,” he said again, glaring down at JD.
JD let his head drop to one side and looked past Red to Soo-hyun. “I thought you said your dog wouldn’t bother me.”
“Ain’t their dog,” Red said.
“But you are a dog?” JD said with a smirk.
A guttural noise leaped from Red’s throat—he barked, grinning when JD flinched. JD stepped back and Red closed the gap, leering and silent, his chest puffed out like a pigeon in mating season. A mix of sweat, dirt, and adolescent pheromone filled JD’s nose, smelling like frenzied masturbation and teenage heartbreak.
“I don’t need this shit,” JD said. He turned from Red and started walking; hyper-aware of his limping gait as he felt the teens watching.
Soo-hyun dodged past Red and put an arm around JD’s shoulder. “Ignore the asshole, hyung,” they whispered. “He wants you gone so he can do it his way. If that happens, a lot of people are going to get hurt.”
JD stopped and let Soo-hyun turn him around.
He nodded to the homemade arsenal held by Red’s gang of miscreants. “Those things look dangerous,” JD said.
“Bet your fucking life they’re dangerous,” Red crowed, to snickers from the rest.
“To whoever pulls the trigger,” JD said deadpan.
Soo-hyun bumped against JD’s shoulder and grinned. Even a couple of Red’s goons had to smile at that.
Red chewed his lip and scowled. He spat on the ground and nodded over his shoulder. “Kali wants to see you, and that’s the only reason you’re welcome here. If you step out of line while you’re here, I’ll be waiting.”
“Eat your own shit, Red,” Soo-hyun said. They put their arm around JD’s shoulder, and led him past the gang. “Just choke it down.”
The two of them walked toward a beacon of orange light glowing ahead. The hacked police dog followed, the high whine of its actuators accompanying the distant drone of traffic like waves crashing on the shore.
When he was sure they were out of earshot, JD said, “ ‘Eat your own shit’? I haven’t heard that since the last time Dad drove me anywhere.”
“I thought I might bring it back.”
“He’d probably like that.” JD put his arm around Soo-hyun’s waist and they rested their head on his shoulder. “Remember when you said it to your teacher?” he asked.
“Oh, shit,” Soo-hyun said with a giggle. “I was, what, eight?”
“Give or take.”
“I thought Mum would never talk to me again.”
“And afterward, when Dad drove us home from the parent-teacher meeting, it was dead silent, like a funeral in a library. We stopped at the lights and he just burst out laughing.” JD chuckled at the memory.
Soo-hyun laughed and turned to JD with tears in their eyes. “And Mum kept slapping him on the arm, ‘It’s not funny, it’s not funny!’ ”
JD sobbed with laughter. “But she was laughing as she hit him.”
“We all were.”
JD waited for his breathing to settle. He wiped his eyes. “That marriage was a disaster.”
Soo-hyun sighed—a high-pitched sound to expel the laughter. “But we still have each other.”
JD stepped on a loose patch of gravel and winced as pain shot through his damaged knee. “We sure do.”
CHAPTER THREE
The landscape changed incrementally with each step they took toward the central light of Liber. The cement rubble had been swept aside to form paths; cracks in the roads and footpaths were patched with black asphalt still sticky underfoot. Buildings at the commune’s outskirts sat abandoned, used as little more than elevated rooftop gardens to catch the sun, but closer to the heart of the place, renovated apartment blocks breathed with familial life. Children ran down streets empty of cars, shouting and squealing as they played cops and robbers, watched over by stolen police drones, immune to the irony. The air hung heavy with the smells of cooking and the scent of animal manure, while conversations drifted along empty streets in half a dozen languages. People whistled to the dog following close at Soo-hyun’s heels, but it didn’t stray.
JD wondered if the canal area where he had run into Red was a front—deliberately untended to keep the commune hidden behind that desolate no-man’s-land.
“How many people
