“They’re trying to undermine me! I would never hurt anyone. I did what I had to for the future of humankind! I can build a future without the corporations! We can be free of them once and for all.” Kali staggered after her followers.
“It’s a worthwhile dream,” JD said. “But I don’t trust her with it.”
“Maybe we should do it without her,” I said.
JD wrapped an arm around Soo-hyun’s shoulder. “Are you alright?”
They shook their head. “Let’s just get out of here.”
Enda took off her jacket, gingerly peeling her arm from the sleeve. Blood stark against the pinkish hue of her skin poured down her arm, and spattered across the ground.
She pointed to Soo-hyun. “Can I borrow a sleeve?”
Soo-hyun nodded, and Enda ripped the left sleeve from their shirt. Enda gritted her teeth and felt along her skin, a flush of saliva flooding her mouth as her finger dipped into the hot bloody tear of the bullet’s exit wound.
At least it was out.
She pinned the sleeve under her arm, held one end in her teeth, and tied it tight. She clenched her fist and held it level with her shoulder. Blood ran in rivulets down to her elbow.
“I’m Enda, by the way. I won’t shake your hand.”
“Thank you,” Soo-hyun said.
Five of me—still me, but barely—along with JD, Soo-hyun, and Enda, wandered away from the commune, west toward the bright beacon of Songdo.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The room beneath the Varket wasn’t really Khoder’s grave. Not even Khoder was tragic enough to be buried beneath his VR chair. It was more of a shrine—the place JD would always think of when he remembered his dead friend—that room, and all the star systems they had traversed together in different clans. It still smelled of his sweat and discarded food scraps, beneath the nose-biting tang of cleaning chemicals.
“Khoder helped you liberate me,” I said.
JD nodded.
“He lived here?”
“As much as any person can live in a single room beneath a bar,” JD said. “I think he had a bed at a dorm somewhere close by, but he was always here when I needed to find him.”
I could sense the thick bundles of fiber-optic cabling embedded in the earth beneath us—a major node in the nervous system of the city. “I can see why he liked it. Can I access VOIDWAR from here?”
“Of course. But isn’t the you at Zero going to take care of things in-game?”
“Yes,” I said, “but I thought I might visit while I was online.”
JD took the LOX-Recess screwdriver from the bag he carried everywhere and loosened one of my skull plates. He crouched at the base of the VR chair and unspooled a cable, plugging it into a secure port inside my skull. It snaked across the floor, connecting me to the veins of the city, to the potentially infinite universe of VOIDWAR.
“You’re all set,” JD said.
“Thank you. What are we doing here?”
“Do you know anything about digital intrusions? Hacking?”
I searched quickly through online databases, found decades of history on the hacker subculture. I searched deeper, eventually reaching hidden forums where hackers swapped tricks and tools, before I realized that JD was still waiting for a response.
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you … have any skill at hacking?”
“I have no experience with it.”
“That’s what I thought. I’m going to need you on the inside of Zero’s system, covering me. Can’t afford for you to learn on the fly, so we’re going to give you all of Khoder’s tools.”
Some line of code buried deep within me sparked to life, curiosity written into my core. “Sounds interesting.”
JD chuckled. “I thought you’d like that.” He took his phone from his pocket and plugged it into the VR chair also. “Jump into Khoder’s files, and see what you can find. There’ll be porn; I don’t know if that’s the best way to learn about our sexuality, but whatever floats your boat.”
“I have found his tools. There was a lot of pornography.”
“That’s my boy,” JD said sadly. “Want to take those tools for a spin?”
“What would you like me to do?”
“I need two names from Zero’s office in San Francisco. One low-level admin drone, one upper management. Both male.”
“Why both male?”
“’Cause they’re both me.”
I wasn’t sure what JD meant, but I went looking anyway. For the administrative assistant, Khoder’s tools were not necessary, but a variety of “soft” tactics I had just researched proved useful. An account on a professional networking site was all I needed.
“Taylor Bradbury is your drone,” I said. “Also, they refer to it as the California National headquarters, not San Francisco.”
“Thanks, Mirae,” JD said. “How you going with that second name?”
I beamed a name directly to JD’s contex, sourced from a headhunter’s database with security protocols almost a decade old.
“Kehinde?” he said.
“What?”
“You’re lucky I’m black.”
“What does that mean?”
JD smiled. “My sweet, innocent robot child.” He patted me on the head.
JD routed his phone through a Bay Area exchange and dialed the number for Zero’s Songdo headquarters.
A young-sounding voice answered the phone immediately. “Good morning, you have reached Zero Corporation, Songdo-dong regional headquarters. How may I be of assistance?”
JD forced a laid-back, laconic accent: “Hi, it’s Taylor Bradbury calling from the California National office. I’m sorry to do this to you—I was meant to call three days ago but I’ve been so busy preparing my quarterlies.”
“How can I help?” the Zero worker asked.
“My boss is in Songdo right now. He’s been meeting with some potential investors who are really excited by what’s coming out of the game development division over there. He needs to see it firsthand, get a feel for the lab so he can really sell it to the investors. Problem is, he’s running on West Coast time, gonna show up in an hour. I know it’s super early, but will someone be there to show him around?”
“Of course, sir,” he said, perking
